\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t The hot streak is over for Argentine world no. 36 tennis player Sebasti\u00e1n B\u00e1ez at the 2026 Australian Open. The 25-year-old fell by 6-3, 1-6, 6-4, 6-3 to Argentine-born Italian Luciano Darderi after just under two and a half hours of play.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That means Francisco Cer\u00fandolo (20) and Tom\u00e1s Etcheverry (61) are the only remaining Argentine players in the men\u2019s singles draw<\/p>\n
It was an up-and-down, unpredictable match for B\u00e1ez and Darderi. The Argentine started off on the right foot, breaking his rival\u2019s service in the opening game and taking a 2-0 lead, but then conceded five straight games with service problems, as the Italian went on to seal the first set.<\/p>\n
Another great start saw Ba\u00e9z take the lead early in the second set. He was able to keep the advantage this time, breaking Darderi\u2019s serve twice for a 5-0 lead and eventually equalizing the set count at 1-1.<\/p>\n
However, coming from a three-hour grind against Frenchman Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard in the first round, B\u00e1ez visibly felt the Melbourne heat. He started the third set on the back foot, allowing Darderi to take the lead.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When the Italian served to wrap up the set at 5-3, B\u00e1ez broke him and looked to tie the set 5-5, but problems with his serve, which was his Achilles heel throughout the match, saw him concede and allow Darderi to take it, by 6-4.<\/p>\n
The fourth set was more of the same, with a visibly more settled Darderi sealing the match without issue.<\/p>\n
It puts an end to a very solid start to the year for B\u00e1ez, who wrapped 2025 with a 17-24 record, but had surged to an 8-1 record and made it to the final in Auckland in 2026 before this loss.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not the last we\u2019ve heard of Argentine tennis stars in the 2026 Australian Open, as Cer\u00fandolo and Etcheverry will feature in the third round, going up against Andrey Rublev (15) and Alexander Bublik (10) respectively.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The hot streak is over for Argentine world no. 36 tennis player Sebasti\u00e1n B\u00e1ez at the 2026 Australian Open. The 25-year-old fell by 6-3, 1-6, 6-4, 6-3 to Argentine-born Italian Luciano Darderi after just under two and a half hours of play.\u00a0 That means Francisco Cer\u00fandolo (20) and Tom\u00e1s Etcheverry (61) are the only remaining […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":28606,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7837,7839,67,5570],"tags":[7833,7835,1369,5568],"class_list":["post-28605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australian-open","category-sebastian-baez","category-sports","category-tennis","tag-australian-open","tag-sebastian-baez","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28605"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28605\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}