Former finalist Maria Sakkari has advanced to the quarter-finals of the Washington Open at the expense of second-seeded American Emma Navarro,<\/p>\n
Greek player Sakkari, the 2023 runner-up to Coco Gauff at this tournament, \u00a0scored a 7-5 7-6 (7-1) win over Navarro in their round-of-16 clash on Wednesday (local time).<\/p>\n
In another upset, unseeded Russian Anna Kalinskaya eliminated No. 8 seed Magda Linette, of Poland, 6-4 6-0 to also \u00a0make the quarter-finals.<\/p>\n
Also advancing was Danish No.4 seed Clara Tauson, who beat American qualifier Caroline Dolehide 3-6 7-5 6-4.<\/p>\n
It was a mixed day for veteran American Venus Williams, whose run in doubles with partner Hailey Baptiste ended in the second round with a 6-4 3-6 10-6 loss in a champion’s tiebreaker to the second-seeded American-Chinese pairing of Taylor Townsend and Zhang Shuai.<\/p>\n
The 45-year-old Williams is competing at her first tournament in more than a year – and first in doubles since 2022. She and Baptiste won their first-round match on Monday.<\/p>\n
Williams will play her second-round singles match on Thursday against Magdalena Frech.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, Williams became the second-oldest woman to win a tour-level singles match, beating Payton Stearns – who is 23 – in straight sets. Martina Navratilova was 47 when she picked up her last singles victory in 2004.<\/p>\n
Williams’ return to professional tennis will not just be a one-tournament visit. After her singles win in Washington, she was awarded a wildcard entry for next month’s Cincinnati Open.<\/p>\n
The Cincinnati event begins on August 5 and is a hard-court tune-up for the US Open.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former finalist Maria Sakkari has advanced to the quarter-finals of the Washington Open at the expense of second-seeded…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17731,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,18941,18940,18937,1750,18938,18939,18935,18942,85,18936,747,11549],"class_list":{"0":"post-17730","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-caroline-dolehide","11":"tag-clara-tauson","12":"tag-coco-gauff","13":"tag-emma-navarro","14":"tag-hailey-baptiste","15":"tag-magda-linette","16":"tag-maria-sakkari","17":"tag-quarter-finals","18":"tag-sports","19":"tag-taylor-townsend","20":"tag-tennis","21":"tag-venus-williams"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17730"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17730\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}