The 8th-seeded Russian tennis player Veronika Kudermetova had a hard start at the WTA 500 Qatar TotalEnergies Open in Doha. The Russian player defeated Barbora Krejcikova (Czech Republic) by 2-1 (6:4, 3:6, 7:6) in a match that lasted more than 3 hours.
Veronika Kudermetova started the match strongly. In the first set, she missed two break-point opportunities in the third game but succeeded to break her opponent in the fifth game to take a lead of 3:2. This was enough for her to win the first set by 6:4.
The Russian tennis player started the second set with 4 opportunities to realize a break, but Barbora Krejcikova saved all of them. In the second game things changed and Barbora Krejcikova had 2 opportunities to break and she did not miss her chance. The Czech player did not give any more opportunity for her opponent to return to the set and won convincingly, equalizing the score to 1-1.
The third set started with an advantage for Veronika Kudermetova, who broke the serve of Barbora Krejcikova in the fourth game and took a lead of 3:1. However, the Czech player returned to the match in the seventh game and broke the serve of Veronika Kudermetova to be able to equalize the score. The Russian tennis player missed two chances in the next game to again take the advantage and needed to save a hidden match point (breakpoint for Barbora Krejcikova before her own serve) in the 11th game. However, finally the set went into a tiebreak, which Veronika Kudermetova succeeded to win and qualify for the second round.
In the other matches of the day at the WTA 500 Qatar TotalEnergies Open in Doha, Karolina Muchova (Czech Republic) defeated Martina Trevisan (Italy) by 2-0 (6:2, 6:2), while Victoria Azarenka (Belarus) eliminated Ipek Oz (Turkey) by 2-0 (6:1, 6:1).
