{"id":612,"date":"2014-01-20T04:31:50","date_gmt":"2014-01-20T04:31:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/?p=612"},"modified":"2014-01-20T07:24:30","modified_gmt":"2014-01-20T07:24:30","slug":"sharapova-out-of-australian-open","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/tennis\/sharapova-out-of-australian-open\/","title":{"rendered":"sharapova out of Australian Open"},"content":{"rendered":"<p itemprop=\"description\">Maria Sharapova followed top seed Serena Williams out of the Australian Open with a shock defeat by Slovakia&#8217;s Dominika Cibulkova in the fourth round.<\/p>\n<p>The Russian, who won the title in 2008, lost 3-6 6-4 6-1 in an erratic display on Rod Laver Arena. Five-time champion Williams was\u00a0beaten by Ana Ivanovic 24 hours earlier,\u00a0leaving two-time champion Victoria Azarenka &#8211; the second seed &#8211; as the player with the most major titles in the draw. Sharapova left the court for a medical timeout before the final set, and finished with a total of 45 unforced errors as Cibulkova closed it out in two hours and 12 minutes.<\/p>\n<div>Cibulkova, 24, moves on to face Jelena Jankovic or Simona Halep in her first Australian Open quarter-final, the third time she has reached the last eight of a Grand Slam.<\/div>\n<p>Sharapova had played an epic second-round match on Thursday against Karin Knapp that lasted three-and-a-half hours in temperatures of around 40C. bbc.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Maria Sharapova followed top seed Serena Williams out of the Australian Open with a shock defeat by Slovakia&#8217;s Dominika Cibulkova in the fourth round. The Russian, who won the title in 2008, lost 3-6 6-4 6-1 in an erratic display on Rod Laver Arena. Five-time champion Williams was\u00a0beaten by Ana Ivanovic 24 hours earlier,\u00a0leaving two-time [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":613,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[14],"tags":[37],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=612"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":636,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612\/revisions\/636"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}