Five weeks ago in Berlin, Alexandra Eala’s victory over Elina Svitolina was one of three Top 10 wins that defined her breakthrough grass-court season.<\/p>\n
But on a “new surface” and in “a new country and new city,” as Svitolina put it, the Ukrainian hopes for a different result when they meet Friday in the quarterfinals of the Mubadala DC Open.<\/p>\n
Svitolina set the rematch with a 7-6(4), 6-4 win over Polina Kudermetova in the second round on Thursday night. Kudermetova served for the first set twice, and had a set point at 40-30 at 6-5, before Svitolina completed the win.<\/p>\n
The second seed saved set point with a backhand passing shot winner that closed a nine-shot rally where Kudermetova was in control, and later, dug out of a 4-3 second-set game in which she saved three break points to complete the gritty victory.<\/p>\n
The 1 hour and 27-minute win marked Svitolina’s first in over a month, dating back to an opening win against Liudmila Samsonova in Bad Homburg on June 23.<\/p>\n
“I was trying to be locked in … first match, hard courts, everything is new,” Svitolina said afterwards. “She had a couple of matches in the qualifying, the first round … so it was nice to find my game, find my serve towards then end of the match, so I’m happy to be through into the quarterfinals.”<\/p>\n
“I was eager to get back on track,” she added. “I’m happy that I could handle the first set, get back as quick as I can, and find opportunity to win. I was not expecting to play perfectly in the first match. When you have a break, when you have not played competitively for a bit, it’s not easy.<\/p>\n
“I think she played quite well … her game is quite big with big shots, so I missed a couple of opportunities, but in the end I was happy with the way I could handle myself and my nerves in the tiebreak in the first set, and then the game was much better from my side.”<\/p>\n
Against Eala, Svitolina will bid for her first semifinal berth since winning the Internazionali BNL d’Italia in May.<\/p>\n
“It was not an easy battle for me,” Svitolina said of her 6-4, 6-3 defeat to Eala on grass. “Tomorrow is a new surface, new country, a new city, so it’s a new challenge, and hopefully I’m going to draw some confidence from today’s match and carry it into tomorrow.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Five weeks ago in Berlin, Alexandra Eala’s victory over Elina Svitolina was one of three Top 10 wins…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":837845,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593,5452],"class_list":["post-837844","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-text"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/837844","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=837844"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/837844\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/837845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=837844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=837844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=837844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}