Leylah Fernandez took two hours and 55 minutes to seal her win against Kamilla Rakhimova at the Wuhan Open.Pamela Smith/The Associated Press
Canada’s Leylah Fernandez battled past Russia’s Kamilla Rakhimova 6-2, 5-7, 7-6 (4) on Wednesday to reach the Round of 16 at the Wuhan Open.
Fernandez, ranked 28th in the world, took two hours and 55 minutes to seal her win against Rakhimova, the world No. 66, at the hard court event.
Fernandez, of Laval, Que., will face China’s Zheng Qinwen, gold medalist at the Paris Olympics, in the next round.
Fernandez started strong but lost momentum, becoming erratic during the second set and finishing with 12 double faults to Rakhimova’s two.
Fernandez converted five of 12 break points, while Rakhimova broke serve four times out of 10 chances. Both hit one ace.
Meanwhile, fellow Canadian Gabriela Dabrowski, of Ottawa, and her New Zealand partner Erin Routliffe advanced to the quarter-finals of the women’s doubles competition with a 0-6, 6-4, 11-9 win over China’s Wang Yafan and Xu Yifan. They’ll next meet the duo of Irina Khromacheva and Anna Danilina.
Second-ranked Aryna Sabalenka maintained her undefeated record at the Wuhan Open, opening her campaign with a 6-4, 6-4 win over 37th-ranked Katerina Siniakova in a second-round match on Wednesday.
Two-time defending champion Sabalenka, who received a bye in the first round with the other top eight seeds, broke her Czech opponent twice in each set – as well as surrendering one of her own service games – as she clinched her latest win in 1 hour and 34 minutes of play.
In the third round, the 26-year-old Belarussian will play Yulia Putintseva of Kazakhstan, who ended Paris Olympics silver medalist Donna Vekic’s tournament with 6-4, 3-6, 6-4 victory.
The reigning U.S. Open champion is now up to 13-0 in Wuhan after winning the title on her first appearance in 2018 and defending her crown in 2019 before the tournament took its five-year hiatus from the calendar due to COVID-19 travel restrictions and a WTA boycott of China.
“I missed Wuhan a lot,” Sabalenka said. “I just have really good memories of winning, two times, the title here. Just Wuhan brings me a lot of great memories, good vibes.”
Sabalenka needs only to make the quarter-finals at Wuhan to regain top spot in the rankings from Iga Swiatek, who withdrew from the women’s Asian swing citing fatigue and personal reasons. Swiatek recently split with coach Tomasz Wiktorowski.
There were six Americans in second round matches on Wednesday.
China Open champion Coco Gauff routed Bulgaria’s Viktoriya Tomova 6-1, 6-2 in 75 minutes, while Hailey Baptiste upset 10th-ranked Barbora Krejcikova 6-3, 7-5 for her first win over a Top-10 player.
Magdalena Frech beat eighth-ranked Emma Navarro 6-4, 3-6, 6-3 in just over two hours, and No. 11-ranked Daria Kasatkina overcame a midmatch stumble to defeat Amercian Bernarda Pera 6-4, 1-6, 6-1.
Amanda Anisimova withdrew from her match against 17th-ranked Marta Kostyuk.
Later Wednesday, third-ranked Jessica Pegula plays Anastasia Potapova and the Andreeva sisters – Mirra and Erika – face each other for the first time at a tour-level tournament.
Meanwhile, Jannik Sinner avenged his defeat to Ben Shelton in the fourth round of last year’s Shanghai Masters with a 6-4, 7-6 (1) to spoil the 22-year-old American’s birthday on Wednesday.
Like last year, the duel again featured some incredible shotmaking and serving dominance but this time the 23-year old Italian prevailed to improve his record against Shelton to 4-1.
“Happy how I handled this situation, it’s obviously a position where I have been last year, and where I am right now, it’s different, so I’m happy to be in the position where I am,” Sinner said.
Sinner’s break in the ninth game was all that separated the duo in the opening set. Both players then dominated on their own serve through the second before the Italian sped away in the tiebreak and won the last seven points of the match to advance to his seventh ATP Masters 1000 quarter-final of the year.
He will play fifth-ranked Daniil Medvedev, who earlier beat long-time rival Stefanos Tsitsipas 7-6 (3), 6-3, in a match where the Greek player launched into a minutes-long rant against the chair umpire Fergus Murphy over a time violation call and initially refused to continue playing.
“You have never played tennis in your life. You have no clue about tennis, it seems like,” Tsitsipas said to Murphy. “Definitely you’ve had no career. You probably played serve-and-volley every single time.
“Anyways, tennis is a physical sport and we need some time over there. You have to show some compassion because you aren’t showing any.
“It’s a physical sport. We are not throwing darts out here, okay?
“If it’s going to be unfair, I need to talk to the supervisor. You seem like you have no idea what you’re doing,” Tsitsipas continued as the crowd began to slow clap.
In a similar incident the day prior, Frances Tiafoe cursed repeatedly at a chair umpire after losing his third round match and later apologized.
Second-ranked Carlos Alcaraz, who won the China Open in a thriller against Sinner last week, made it 12 consecutive wins with a testing 6-4, 7-5 victory over French veteran Gael Monfils to advance to the quarter-finals.
Alcaraz needed all his shotmaking abilities to outmanoeuvre the 38-year-old Monfils, with the 21-year-old Spaniard making 22 winners and taking a break in each set to clinch the match in 87 minutes.
The French Open and Wimbledon champion will play Tomas Machac in the quarter-finals.
Later Wednesday, Novak Djokovic continues his bid for a 100th career title as he faces 61st-ranked Roman Safiullin.
Also, third-ranked Alexander Zverev plays David Goffin of Belgium and seventh-ranked Taylor Fritz plays Holger Rune of Denmark.
With files from The Canadian Press.