Sabalenka sets up Wimbledon clash with Osaka after beating Ostapenko

Aryna Sabalenka powered past Jelena Ostapenko 6-4, 6-4 at Wimbledon on Friday and kept alive her bid for a 15th consecutive Grand Slam quarter-final, then turned the spotlight to a fourth-round meeting with Naomi Osaka. The world No. 1 has now reached the Wimbledon fourth round for the fourth time, but the All England Club remains one of the last gaps on her résumé: Sabalenka has reached the semi-finals on each of her past three visits and still has not won the title.

Osaka joined her there by beating Daria Kasatkina 6-1, 6-3 to reach the Wimbledon fourth round for the first time. The victory completed Osaka’s career set of second-week appearances at all four majors, another marker of how far the four-time Grand Slam champion has pushed her return to the top tier of the women’s game. Sabalenka’s path and Osaka’s path now meet at the point where Wimbledon has been asking the same question all fortnight: who can absorb pace and keep striking first?

This will be the fourth Sabalenka-Osaka meeting of 2026, and the matchup has already become a recurring test of power against power. Sabalenka beat Osaka 6-2, 6-4 at Indian Wells in March, came from a set and a break down to beat her in Madrid in April, and followed that with a 7-5, 6-3 win at Roland Garros in May. Their rivalry started at the 2018 US Open, when Osaka beat Sabalenka on the way to her first Grand Slam title.

The stakes at Wimbledon are higher because both players arrive with the kind of form that can reshape the bottom half of the draw in a single afternoon. Sabalenka’s straight-sets win over Ostapenko, the 2017 French Open champion, ended a third-round clash between two of the WTA’s biggest hitters. Osaka’s run past Kasatkina was even cleaner, with just four games dropped, and it gave her a rare new milestone at the All England Club.

Sabalenka framed the challenge in familiar terms, saying Osaka was “another aggressive player” and that it would be a “very powerful match.” With both women already major champions and both striking the ball as cleanly as anyone left in the field, Sunday’s meeting carries the feel of a match that could define the rest of the tournament.