BRISBANE, Australia (AP) — This rematch between the Australian Open finalists was lopsided, and Aryna Sabalenka flipped the outcome with a straight-sets win over Madison Keys.
Top-ranked Sabalenka broke Keys' in five straight service games on the way to a 6-3, 6-3 win in 1 1/2 hours Friday to reach the semifinals of the Brisbane International, a tuneup event for the Australian Open which begins Jan. 18.
“I didn’t really have the throwback to the Australian Open last year, to be honest," Sabalenka said. "I know that I lost in Australia against her and it's a big motivation, of course, to go out and get the win.
"But I always look into the (next) match as like a new match against a new player. That's my approach."
The defending Brisbane champion will next take on 11th-seeded Karolina Muchova, who had a 6-2, 2-6, 6-4 win over Elena Rybakina to end a 13-match streak for the No. 3 seed. Fourth-seeded Jessica Pegula had a 6-3, 7-6 (3) quarterfinal win over No. 10 Liudmila Samsonova and will next play No. 16 Marta Kostyuk, who beat sixth-seeded Mirra Andreeva 7-6 (7), 6-3.
Muchova has the better of the career head-to-head meetings against WTA Finals champion Rybakina. She also has a 3-1 record against No. 1 Sabalenka.
“Doesn’t matter if I’m the one who is leading head-to-head or I’m the one who is losing — I don’t care,” Sabalenka said, adding that her focus is to control the kinds of emotions that derailed her sometimes when she was younger.
“In the past, I could lose a match because I’d be so frustrated. Now I’m just trying to move on like, ‘OK, whatever,'” she said. “I feel like it’s been working well for me.”
Keys will head to Adelaide aiming to retain the title there and then hope to repeat the sequence from 2025, when she went on to win her first Grand Slam title two weeks later in Melbourne.
“Hopefully I can gain and then just keep a lot of momentum going,” she said. “Hopefully there is many more firsts to come.”
On a warm Friday afternoon on Pat Rafter Arena, Sabalenka got the first service break in the seventh game and then took six of the next seven games. Keys broke serve to open the second set in the only interruption in that sequence.
The 30-year-old American faced immense pressure on her second serve, finishing the match with eight double-faults and winning just 33% of points on her second serve.
Keys saved two match points in the eighth game of the second set but it barely slowed down Sabalenka, who served out at love.
Sabalenka has two straight-set wins over Keys — the other was 6-0, 6-1 at Indian Wells — since that loss at Melbourne Park almost 12 months ago. She also reached the French Open final, won the U.S. Open and finished the competitive season with a runner-up finish at the WTA Finals.
Earlier at the Brisbane tournament, she described the season schedule as “insane” and said she’ll risk fines in order to skip tournaments to avoid injuries or burnout. Still, she wants as much competition as possible before the season's first major.
“I’m just trying to get some matches, get some wins,” she said, "and get the rhythm going again.”
In the men's tournament, top-seeded Daniil Medvedev came from a set down to beat Kamil Majchrzak 6-7 (4), 6-3, 6-2 and advance to the semifinals.
“I managed to stay composed and hit some great shots to win the match,” Medvedev said.
Medvedev will face Alex Michelsen in the semis.
AP tennis: https://apnews.com/hub/tennis
Aryna Sabalenka serves against Nick Kyrgios during their Battle of the Sexes tennis match, in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Sunday Dec. 28, 2025. (Amr Alfiky/Pool Photo via AP)
BRUSSELS (AP) — Italy on Friday gave crucial support to plans by the European Union to seal a huge free trade deal with five South American nations neighboring Venezuela that has been negotiated for over 25 years.
Italy's Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni was long seen as the key vote in the campaign by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to rally support for the trade deal with the Mercosur nations of Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay and Uruguay.
Von der Leyen could now potentially sign the deal next week during a meeting in Paraguay. European Parliament will vote on it before it enters into force.
Italy confirmed its support for the deal on Friday, with Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani hailing it as "good news for Italy.”
“This agreement is destined to boost our exports, with the goal of reaching 700 billion euros in exports," Tajani wrote in a post on X. He acknowledged the deal required a long negotiation, but added that Italy had secured protections for its farmers, "especially regarding production standards.”
Meloni said at a press conference on Friday she never had “any ideological objections” to the Mercosur agreement.
"We have always said we will be in favor of it when there are sufficient guarantees for our farmers,” she said. “The agreement’s potential is good, but not at the expense of the excellence of our products.”
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said in a statement Friday that the agreement "is a milestone in European trade policy and an important signal of our strategic sovereignty and ability to act.”
He stressed that “with this agreement, we are strengthening our economy and trade relations with our partners in South America -- which is good for Germany and for Europe."
The deal would create one of the world's largest free trade zones, covering some 780 million people from Uruguay to Romania and a quarter of the globe’s gross domestic product.
It also gives Brussels a diplomatic win at a time of economic upheaval, providing a stark counterpoint to the gunboat diplomacy of Washington and the coercive export controls of Beijing.
“Given Trump’s policies of isolating the U.S. from the rest of the world, it is an imperative for the EU to lead trade integration policies at the global level and to look for partners elsewhere,” said Antonio Fatas, a macroeconomist at the French business school INSEAD.
In the wake of Trumps’ tariff wars, Brussels has sought to curtail its dependency on the U.S. market with trade deals forged across the world. The EU has struck deals with Japan and Indonesia, and are working on one with India.
A delay in December to the signing of the deal had infuriated Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and led experts to worry a last-minute stumble would wreck the EU's credibility.
“For Europeans, the finalization of free-trade agreements with new partners stands among the best responses to US tariffs, growing protectionism and trade tensions with China,” said Agathe Demarais, a senior fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. She said the current EU reliance on China for some critical raw materials could be broken by tapping into Mercosur's deposits.
Opposition to the deal was led by France and Poland, with riled-up farmers flooding streets and blocking roads with tractors from Brussels to Athens. Austria, Hungary and Ireland also voted against it.
Ireland's Prime Minister Micheal Martin said on Thursday in Shanghai during a state visit to China that “we don't have confidence that (Irish farmers) wouldn't be undercut by that,” according to Irish public broadcaster RTE.
Both Martin and French President Emmanuel Macron said that internal negotiations sparked by the political furor surrounding the deal had led to reforms that better protect European farmers. But they acknowledged such reforms were not enough to overcome domestic political pressure.
Posting on X on Thursday, Macron said three of France's key demands were now being met: New safeguards to an “emergency brake” of imports if they are found to undercut EU prices by 5% or more; the mirroring of EU food safety regulations in the Mercosur bloc; and an increase of inspections of agrifood imports at EU ports and beyond.
Still, Macron said the potential economic gains of the Mercosur deal are limited and do not justify the risks it poses to EU agriculture. His office stated that the deal would only add 77 billion euros ($89.7 billion) by 2040 — half a percent of the EU's GDP.
Green members of European Parliament had vowed to take the Commission to court over the deal. They said the agreement would accelerate deforestation in the Amazon and weaken the EU's climate targets.
Frances Verkamp, trade campaigner at Friends of the Earth Europe, described the deal as “toxic." She said Brussels is "playing a game of imperial dominance in global trade with China and the US that wins nothing for workers or consumers — and even less for nature and climate.”
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Zampano reported from Rome. Sylvie Corbet contributed from Paris.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni arrives at her annual start-of-the-year press conference in the press room at the Lower Chamber, in Rome, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)
