The 2023 Wimbledon champion Marketa Vondrousova (Czech Republic) qualified for the quarter-finals of the WTA 1000 Western & Southern Open after defeating Sloane Stephens (USA) by 2-0 (7:5, 6:3) in 1:23 hours of play. The Czech tennis player, who is also Tokyo 2020 Olympics runner-up, makes another strong season and climbed to world’s No 10 so far, but continuing to play strong possibly will improve her ranking.
The match started equally, both players winning their serve games relatively easy without any break points. Only in the 7th games of the set, Marketa Vondrousova received two breakpoints and she materialized already the first to take a lead of 4:3 and after winning her serve game she make the result 5:3. At 5:4 she served for the set, but gave three breakpoints to Sloane Stephens, who got two brakpoints and materialized already the first to equalize to 5:5. Already in the next game, Marketa Vondrousova broke her opponent again and served for the set. This time, although saving three breakpoints and losing four setpoints, she succeeded to close the set at 7:5 after the longest game in the match.
Sloane Stephens tried to return to the match, but Marketa Vondrousova was the more classy played on the court in the second set. After two break, the Czech player succeeded to win the match and qualified for the quarter finals, where will face the winner between the top-seeded Iga Swiatek (Poland) and Qinwen Zheng (China).
Karolina Muchova (Czech Republic) is the second quarter-finalist at the WTA 1000 Western & Southern Open after defeating the 8th-seeded Maria Sakkari (Greece) by 2-1 (6:3, 2:6, 6:3) in 1:57 hours of play.
