World no. 1 Ashleigh Barty was able to win her third-round match at the Wuhan Open for 3rd year in a row to reach her third consecutive Wuhan Open quarterfinal after she defeated Sofia Kenin by 6-3 and 7-5.
Barty was falling behind with 5-3 score during the 2nd set but was then able to save herself 2 breakpoints against the American and was able to win 4 games in a row to seal the 2nd set in her favor.
Barty said, “I had a moment in the second set where I allowed her to take too many chances and she was definitely able to take advantages of them. In the end, I am really glad of myself to be able to make a comeback and then play aggressively to close the game with straight sets.”
Barty is now going to face Petra Martic who earlier defeated her Russian opponent of the third-round match, Veronika Kudermetova by 6-3 and 6-1.
In other matches of the day, the third-seeded Ukrainian Elina Svitolina was able to beat her opponent Svetlana Kuznetsova by 6-4 and 6-2.
Svitolina only had 15 unforced errors in comparison to her opponent making 33 unforced errors.
Svitolina said, “I think today’s match was a lot about tactics. I just tried to keep the ball away from the middle and then try to work well with the ball and getting great angles and not rushing things.”
Svitolina is now going to face US’s Alison Riske in their quarterfinals match. Alison Riske earlier defeated Qiang Wang of Taiwan by 6-2 and 6-1.
As for the first match of the day, it was a shocking one when Elena Rybakina was able to reach the quarterfinal after her opponent Simona Halep had to withdraw from the event due to her injury of the lower back. Prior to withdrawing, Halep was on the losing end with score being 5-4.
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