MELBOURNE, Australia — Not even a point penalty for hindrance slowed Aryna Sabalenka’s run to a fourth consecutive Australian Open final.

The top-ranked Sabalenka overpowered Elina Svitolina 6-2, 6-3 Thursday night to move within one victory of a third Australian Open title in four years.

A rematch of the 2023 final against Elena Rybakina was set up when the No. 5 seed ousted No. 6 Jessica Pegula 6-3, 7-6 (7) in the second semifinal.

Her semifinal was mostly one way until Rybakina had match point. The 2022 Wimbledon champion missed three match points on Pegula’s serve and then was broken twice while serving for the match.

Pegula rallied and had two set points in the tiebreaker but wasn’t able to convert, and Rybakina finally clinched it 29 minutes after her first match point.

“Really, really stressful,” Rybakina said. She admitted to flashbacks from the 2024 Open when she lost the longest women’s tiebreaker ever at a Grand Slam to Anna Blinkova 22-20 in a three-set defeat.

“I’m proud no matter the situation. It got very tight, I stayed there,” she said of the win over Pegula. “I was fighting for each point.”

For Pegula, it became a matter of swing or miss out.

“Sometimes when you’re on the brink of losing everything you get a little clarity because you’re kind of just like, ‘Screw it, I’m just going to try and stay in this,'” she said. “I played a couple of really good points to save the match points, and, you know, she missed a couple short balls … a couple free points to take some pressure off.”

All four players reached the semifinals without dropping a set — in Australia for the first time in 56 years — and Sabalenka and Svitolina were each on 10-match winning streaks to start the season after titles in warmup events.

Sabalenka kept both of her streaks alive. As has become customary for Ukrainians against players from Russia and Belarus, there was no handshakes at the net. There was also no group photo before the match.