Wta Beijing: Caroline Wozniacki and Garbine Muguruza off to a winning start
The Dane beats Bencic. the Spaniard needs seven match points to defeat Makarova. Tsurenko retires over Goerges in the second round
OCTOBER 1, 2018 14:16
by ALESSANDRO MASTROLUCA | VIEW 220
Wta Beijing: Caroline Wozniacki and Garbine Muguruza off to a winning start
Caroline Wozniacki, Garbine Muguruza and Karolina Pliskova gave a solid start to their China Open campaign in Beijing. Wozniacki defeated Belinda Bencic 62 63 and will now face Petra Martic. Muguruza closed it out on her seventh match point to win 60 64 over Ekaterina Makarova, who recovered from 3-1 down in the final set to defeat her in the first round at 2014 Wuhan.
The Czech came back from a break down in the opening set to dismiss Samantha Stosur 64 64. The Dane beat Bencic for the third time in seven meetings and finished the match with the most one-sided score since her 60 60 win in the first clash
in the first round of Istanbul in 2014.
"I think it's the end of the year, and everyone just wants to qualify for Singapore, play there, then go on vacation, be able to relax a little bit. I think that's kind of the goal: qualify for Singapore, play well there, finish off the season strong, then call it a year.
Then you regroup and get ready for Australia" she said before the tournament. Bencic tallied 34 unforced errors to 22 winners, while Wozniacki resumed control and now aims to extend to 5-0 her head to head record against Martic.
Making her 12th consecutive appearance at Beijing, where she was champion in 2010 (d. Zvonareva in F), Wozniacki avoided her fourth first-round loss, although the most recent of these was in 2009 (l. Martínez Sánchez).
Since lifting the title at Eastbourne in June, Wozniacki has posted a 4-6 record and completed the highest-ranked win during this sequence. Currently No.5 on the Porsche Race to Singapore leaderboard – is the defending WTA Finals champion – and can clinch qualification by reaching the final in Beijing.
"At some point, it's going to start turning", says Garbine Muguruza about her recent results. "I think there's maybe two kind of confidence: I think there is the one that's inside you, I think I probably still feel that I'm confident with my game and with my experience and my level.
Probably I had a few matches where it was tight. It's just a process of keep getting those moments, get it my way" Last year, as top seed the Spaniard retired in the first round against Strycova with viral illness.
This time she needed seven match points to seal the victory in her seventh WTA meeting against a Russian opponent and increase to 4-3 her record, most recently beating Pavlyuchenkova at Birmingham in June. In the second round, Muguruza will face for the first time the Wuhan champion Aryna Sabalenka who dropped two sets to claim the biggest title of her career.
Pliskova, seeking to make the quarterfinals of all four Premier Mandatory tournaments in the same year for the first time, beat Stosur with the same score of their lone previous meeting in Wuhan four years ago and extended to five matches the Aussie's losing streak.
Pliskova will now bid to avenge the defeat suffered to Aliaksandra Sasnovich in their only clash so far in Tokyo in 2016. Zhang Shuai completed an emphatic home win as she came back from 1-3 down in the third to knock out 61 36 63 No.15 Elise Mertens, eliminated from the Race to Singapore.
The Belgian, who won when the pair met in Montréal this summer, was looking for the 44th main draw win of the season. The Chinese, a former quarter-finalist here in 2016, scored the best win of career her career in Beijing in 2009 over Dinara Safina.
Ranked No.226 at the time, she became lowest-ranked player to defeat a reigning world No.1. In the first second-round match completed, Lesia Tsurenko gingerly walked to her chair holding her back while serving at 2-2, 30-40 and was forced to retire against Julia Goerges.
She had just taken a medical timeout for what looked like a lower back injury. More to follow...
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