Aryna Sabalenka (Belarus) advanced to the third round of the WTA 1000 Indian Wells Open tennis tournament with a prize money of 9.25 million USD.
The world No 2 and second-seeded reached a difficult success over Peyton Stearns (USA) by 2-1 (6:7, 6:2 and 7:6). The match started equally with exchanging two breaks for each player. The American tennis player, however, won the tiebreak undoubtedly by 7-2. Aryna Sabalenka returned to the match with easy winning the second set, but faced another disaster in the third set, where needed to save four match points at 5:4 and serve for Peyton Stearns. However, at the end, the Belarusian tennis player succeeded to equalize and turned the set into a tiebreak, which won by 8-6 from her fourth match point.
Aryna Sabalenka needed nearly three hours to defeat her opponent and qualify for the next round, where she will face Emma Raducanu (Great Britain), who overcame Dayana Yastremska (Ukraine), who retired due to injury at 4:0 down in the first set.
Former world number one Naomi Osaka (Japan) continued her good performance, this time defeating the 14th-seeded Liudmila Samsonova (Russia) by 2-0 (7:5, 6:3). The next opponent will be Elise Mertens (Belgium).
Elina Svitolina (Ukraine) eliminated Katerina Siniakova (Czech Republic) after 2-1 (6:3, 2:6, 6:1).
