No. 5 seed Jessica Pegula fended off three match points in a knife-edge second-set tiebreak to defeat No. 30 seed Emma Raducanu 3-6, 7-6(9), 6-0 in 2 hours and 21 minutes to reach the China Open fourth round.<\/p>\n
Beijing: Scores<\/a> | Draws<\/a> | Order of play<\/a><\/p>\n The result marks the first time Pegula has won from match point down since the 2024 Berlin final, in which she staved off five championship points to defeat Anna Kalinskaya 6-7(0), 6-4, 7-6(3). In her very next match, she lost from match point up to Raducanu 4-6, 7-6(6), 7-5 in the Eastbourne second round. Having turned the tables on the Briton, Pegula now leads their head-to-head 3-1.<\/p>\n It is the second time in as many weeks that Raducanu has lost from three match points up, and via an overtime second-set tiebreak, to a former Top 3 opponent. In the Seoul second round, she squandered a 5-2 second-set lead to fall to Barbora Krejcikova 4-6, 7-6(10), 6-1. Raducanu led 5-2 in both tiebreaks.<\/p>\n “That was a crazy match,” Pegula said in her on-court interview. “That was really intense. But I got myself back into the tiebreak and just wanted keep pressure on. When she hit the double fault [leading 5-4], I knew I was still playing some good tennis. It was right there, it was really, really close. And to be honest, I think I got a little lucky on those two backhand winners [both down match point]. But I just tried to keep fighting for as long as I could.”<\/p>\n Pegula advances to the Beijing last 16 for a second straight year, and will face Marta Kostyuk there after The No. 23 seed defeated qualifier Aliaksandra Sasnovich 6-4, 6-2. Pegula leads their head-to-head 3-1, including a 6-2, 6-3 victory in their most recent meeting in the Miami fourth round this March.<\/p>\n More to come…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"No. 5 seed Jessica Pegula fended off three match points in a knife-edge second-set tiebreak to defeat No.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":44681,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[85,46,105,4277],"class_list":["post-44680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-sports","tag-text"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44680"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44680\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}