Svitolina, Gavrilova advance to Hong Kong Open quarters
Garcia, Mertens through in Tianjin
HONG KONG, Oct 11, (Agencies): Top-seeded Elina Svitolina reached the Hong Kong Open quarter-finals by beating Japanese qualifier Nao Hibino 6-0, 6-3 on Thursday.
Svitolina, who is in the hunt to earn one of the three remaining spots for the upcoming WTA Finals in Singapore, will next play sixthseeded Wang Qiang. The Chinese player defeated Christina McHale 7-5, 6-4.
Last year’s Hong Kong Open runner-up Daria Gavrilova admitted she had lost her concentration Thursday as she made hard work of dispatching unseeded Monica Niculescu over almost three gruelling hours.
The Australian needed a third set tiebreaker – which she closed out with an emphatic smash – to finally break her resilient Romanian opponent, whose forehand slice and confident net play unnerved the seventh seed.
But after two three-set matches so far this week, she now faces China’s number two Zhang Shuai, who wrapped up
Gavrilova
a 6-1, 6-7 (4/7), 6-1 victory against The Netherlands’ Lesley Kerkhove.
Speaking after the win, Zhang said she felt “everything is coming together”.
She added: “I like playing Asia, I like playing China, Hong Kong – I’m feeling happy here.”
China’s leading woman, Wang Qiang, needed only two sets to get past American Christina McHale 7-5, 6-1.
In Tianjin, Second seed Caroline Garcia beat Chinese qualifier Zhang Yuxuan 6-3, 6-4 on Thursday to advance to the Tianjin Open quarter-finals.
Facing the 24-year-old local hope for the first time, Garcia dropped her serve in the opening game but rallied to claim the next five games, including a run of 11 points in a row.
The pair exchanged early breaks in the second set but Garcia took a decisive lead at 4-3 and went on to seal victory in 90 minutes.
Third seed Elise Mertens secured an impressive 6-2, 6-3 victory over Slovakian Jana Cepelova and the Belgian will face Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei in the last eight.
Briton Katie Boulter recovered from a mid-match blip to put away Czech Barbora Krejcikova 6-3, 1-6, 6-3 and set up a quarter-final against top seed Karolina Pliskova. tennis club already owns the freehold to the land which would revert to the All England club in 2041 in any case.
The golfers are expected to vote on the offer before the end of the year.
Wimbledon wants to use the land – landscaped in the 18th Century by English landscape architect Capability Brown – to move qualifying onsite from its current location some three miles (5 km) away in Roehampton.
“The whole experience of being at Wimbledon we think could be transformed,” All England Club chairman Philip Brook said recently.
“And this isn’t about building new big stadia, it’s about a wonderful opportunity...tennis in an English garden.
“We are not planning to build hotels, multi-storey car parks, a helipad, a shopping centre.
The aim was to move the qualifying event on-site, he said.
“Most of the people who play qualifying lose and don’t ever make it inside of the gates of SW19, and we think that’s a shame, and we’re the only grand slam where that is the case. Bringing that event on-site would be fantastic.”