SEEDS SCALPED
On a windy day that saw seeded players fall like a house of cards, world number two Angelique Kerber kept her hopes of reaching the top of women’s game alive.
The reigning US Open champion made a very impressive start to her campaign at the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships on Tuesday, beating wild card Mona Barthel 6-4 6-3 in her second round match.
A title win in Dubai will make Kerber the world number one and she definitely played like one on the show court against a modest compatriot.
Kerber will now face the player who denied her the chance to create history at the Olympics last year. Monica Puig, the little-known Puerto Rican, stunned Kerber in the Olympic final in Rio, denying her the chance to join a select group of players to win a Grand Slam and the Olympic gold in the same year.
Puig needed three sets (6-1 4-6 6-2) to upset 15th seeded Frenchwomen Caroline Garcia on Tuesday.
In the first major upset of the of the day, Russian world number 30 Ekaterina Makarova beat third seed Dominika Cibulkova 6-2 4-6 6-2 to enter the third round.
There was a one-hour-45-minute delay due to the poor weather on Tuesday. But it didn’t seem to disturb Makarova’s rhythm as she hit 12 aces to knock the world number five out of the tournament.
The biggest casualty of the day was, of course, the number two seed and Doha champion Karolina Pliskova of the Czech Republic. The US Open runner-up never found her top form in her tame 6-2 6-4 defeat to Kristina Mladenovic of France.
French Open champion Garbine Muguruza then limped out of the tournament with pain in her left Achilles. The Spaniard was trailing 4-1 against Kateryna Bondarenko of Ukraine when she retired.
Chinese wild card Shuai Peng then joined the party of the underdogs by dismissing ninth seed Barbora Strycova of the Czech Republic 6-3 6-2.
There was glory too for 19-year-old Croatian star Ana Konjuh outplayed 12th seed Samantha Stosur of Australia. The 2011 US Open champion had no answer to the brilliant Croat in her 6-4 6-3 defeat. Among the big names that escaped the mayhem were 10th seed Caroline Wozniacki and 4th seed Agnieszka Radwanska.
When I finished in Doha, that day because of the rain, a lot of people played two matches, including me. The second one was very tough, and I remember that as soon as I went to my room after the match, I started to have pain in my left Achille Garbine Muguruza