Coco Gauff battled sickness as she dug deep to come from a set and a break down and beat Sorana Cirstea to reach the last 16 of the Madrid Open.<\/p>\n
Despite struggling with a stomach virus that saw the American third seed vomit into a bin midway through the second set, Gauff fought back to claim a 4-6 7-5 6-1 victory.<\/p>\n
Several players have been struggling with illness in Madrid this week, including six-time Grand Slam winner Iga Swiatek, who said she had “zero stability and zero energy” after retiring from her match against Ann Li on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Marin Cilic withdrew before his second-round tie with Joao Fonseca on Friday, while Liudmila Samsonova also dropped out of the tournament because of illness before her third-round match with Linda Noskova.<\/p>\n
Gauff asked for a medical timeout in the second set against Romanian 25th seed Cirstea, and when asked how she got through the match, she responded: “I don’t know honestly.”<\/p>\n
She added: “I think I got what everybody else is having here in Madrid, unfortunately. So, I’m just going to try to push through for tomorrow.<\/p>\n
“I did start to feel better, not feeling like I had to throw up. They gave me some pills, so that definitely helped.<\/p>\n
“But I was really tired… The first part was literally just trying to keep whatever I ate down. Once they gave me something to help with that, then I was just nauseous and tired. But I can deal with that.”<\/p>\n
Gauff will play Czech 13th seed Noskova in the last 16 as she continues her preparation on clay before next month’s French Open, where she is the reigning champion.<\/p>\n
Gauff’s win over Cirstea means she has reached the fourth round in Madrid for the third straight year.<\/p>\n
Last year she was beaten in the final by world number one Aryna Sabalenka before avenging that defeat a month later in the final at Roland Garros.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Coco Gauff battled sickness as she dug deep to come from a set and a break down and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":551782,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-551781","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-tennis","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=551781"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551781\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/551782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=551781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=551781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=551781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}