WTA Cincinnati: Yuan Yue's "lucky journey" comes to an end, Sabalenka sets tiebreak record

On August 11 local time, the WTA 1000 Cincinnati tournament held the third round of women's singles. The only Chinese player in the singles draw, Yuan Yue, missed the chance to take the first set and lost a 4-2 lead in the second set, ultimately falling to Romania's Costea with a score of 7-6(2)/4-6/4-6, regrettably stopping at the round of 32 and missing the chance to challenge Swiatek in the fourth round.

Yuan Yue

Although Yuan Yue lost in the final round of the qualifying tournament at this event, she earned a lucky loser spot to enter the main draw. The Chinese player seized this opportunity, defeating Spain's Bouchard and the 14th seed Schneider consecutively, achieving a long-awaited two-match winning streak in the WTA 1000 events. In her match against Costea, both players battled for 2 hours and 51 minutes in high temperatures. Despite feeling unwell towards the end of the match, Yuan Yue persisted until the last moment.

Additionally, Yuan Yue revealed in an interview about her new coach, whom she met at a tennis club in the United States, and they plan to collaborate during the North American autumn hard court season. Yuan Yue expressed that this coach is the best she has worked with so far. If this collaboration proves effective, she hopes to maintain a long-term partnership, looking forward to achieving more breakthroughs under her new coach's guidance.

In women's doubles, Guo Hanyu and Panova staged a comeback to defeat Kato Miui and Voskoboeva with scores of 5-7/6-0/10-5, advancing to face the 5th seeds Muhammad and Schuurs in the next round. The Chinese duo Xu Yifan and Yang Zhaoxuan were eliminated in the first round after losing to the 7th seeds Babos and Stefanini with scores of 7-6(2)/3-6/4-10.

Sabalenka

World No. 1 Sabalenka faced former US Open champion Raducanu in the most exciting match of the day, battling for 3 hours and 9 minutes. Sabalenka narrowly won 7-6(3)/4-6/7-6(5), maintaining a perfect record against Raducanu in three encounters, all of which took place in the past year and a half. Sabalenka improved her tiebreak record this season to 18 wins and 1 loss, currently holding a streak of 16 consecutive tiebreak victories, setting a record for the most tiebreak wins in a single WTA season since the Open Era. Raducanu has shown good form since teaming up with Nadal's former coach, Roig, achieving a semifinal finish at the WTA 500 Washington and a round of 32 finish at the WTA 1000 Montreal. This match marked her first set won against Sabalenka.

In the fourth round, Sabalenka will face Spain's Bosa Manero, who defeated local wildcard Townsend with a score of 6-4/6-1. Former champion and 6th seed Keys swept through Japan's Ito Aoi, who came through qualifying, with a score of 6-4/6-0, advancing to the round of 16 to face the 9th seed Rybakina, who came back to win against the 19th seed Mertens with scores of 4-6/6-3/7-5. The 28th seed Kalinskaya defeated the 5th seed Anisimova with a score of 7-5/6-4 and will face the 12th seed Alexandrova in the fourth round.

Women's singles round of 16 matchups:

Sabalenka [1] vs Bosa Manero

Keys [6] vs Rybakina [9]

Swiatek [3] vs Costea

Alexandrova [12] vs Kalinskaya [28]

(Text and editing by Wang Fei, Images by Visual China)