Naomi Osaka on Tuesday battled into the round-of-16 of the Qatar Open, but Coco Gauff and Ons Jabeur crashed to surprise second-round exits with straight-sets defeats.
Four-time Grand Slam champion Osaka brushed past Croatia’s Petra Martic 6-3, 7-6 (11/9), continuing a comeback from maternity leave after giving birth to her daughter in July last year.
Osaka grasped control with a break in the fourth game of the opening set. She broke twice more in the second set — either side of dropping her own serve — only to blow a chance to close out the match at 5-4.
Photo: AFP
Martic threatened to force a third set as she won the first four points of the tiebreak, but Osaka then saved four set points before her opponent double-faulted on match point.
It is the first WTA tournament in almost two years at which Osaka has won back-to-back matches. She goes on to play Ukraine’s Lesia Tsurenko, who knocked out fourth seed Jabeur 6-3, 6-2.
Tsurenko won nine straight games from 3-1 down in the first set to notch her first victory over a top-10 player in five years.
Jabeur has endured a difficult start to the year. She admitted she was still hampered by a knee problem that affected her in Abu Dhabi.
“Definitely much better than last week, but it’s still there, unfortunately,” Jabeur said. “It will not heal in two or three days, but I’m doing my best to heal it and I think it’s going to be very positive for the next weeks.”
World No. 3 Gauff lost 6-2, 6-4 to Katerina Siniakova in her opening match, marking the first time she has failed to reach the quarter-finals of a tournament since Wimbledon last year.
US Open champion Gauff dropped serve six times in an error-strewn display, blowing a 4-0 lead in the second set.
Siniakova is to face Danielle Collins in the round-of-16.
Elena Rybakina, seeded third, raced past China’s Zhu Lin 6-2, 6-1. She meets Emma Navarro of the US for a place in the quarter-finals.
In the women’s doubles, Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei and Elise Mertens of Belgium, the top seeds, advanced to the quarter-finals when their opponents Oksana Kalashnikova of Georgia and Leylah Annie Fernandez of Canada pulled out of their round-of-16 match.
Additional reporting by staff writer
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