The top-seeded Iga Swiatek (Poland) qualified for the quarter-finals of the hard court tennis tournament WTA 500 Toray Pan Pacific Open Tennis in Tokyo, Japan, with a prize pool of $780,637. The Polish tennis player defeated the Japanese qualifier Mai Hontama by 2-0 (6:4, 7:5) for 2:03 hours of play.
The match started terribly for Iga Swiatek, as her Japanese opponent took a lead of 4:1 with two breaks in her favor. However, the Polish player returned one of the breaks immediately and made a series winning four more games to close the set at 6:4.
In the second set, bot players exchanged a break in the beginning, but after that Iga Swiatek took another great series of four games in a row to lead by 5:1. She served for the match, but Mai Hontama made a surprising break “on 15” and then won her serve game “on zero”. Iga Swiatek served for the match one again but at 30:40 gave another breakpoint to her opponent and the Japanese player did not missed it to reduce the score to 5:4. Mai Hontama served to equalize the score, but gave two match points to Iga Swiatek at 15-40; However, the Japanese played succeeded to save them and finally closed the game to make the score 5:5. And here her power ended, or Iga Swiatek returned into a form top win her serve “on 15” and broke her opponent from the second breakpoint, thus closing the set and the match.
In the quarter-finals of the WTA 500 Toray Pan Pacific Open Tennis, Iga Swiatek will face Veronika Kudermetova (Russia), who eliminated Kayla Day (USA) after 2-0 (6:3, 6:3).
Ekaterina Alexandrova (Russia) also advanced to the quarter-finals of the tennis tournament after defeating her compatriot Liudmila Samsonova by 2-0 (6:4, 6:2).
The second-seeded Jessica Pegula (USA) also qualified for the quarter-finals after defeating Cristina Bucsa (Spain) by 2-0 (6:1, 6:2).
