Dart<\/a> came through 5-7, 6-4, 6-3 in two hours and 48 minutes.<\/p>\nIt\u2019s the British wild card\u2019s best win by ranking since defeating Katie Boulter in the second round of Wimbledon in 2024.<\/p>\n
The win sets up a tough second round clash with fourth seed and world No.11 Belinda Bencic.<\/p>\n
After a disappointing end to the opener \u2013 missing on three break points at 5-5 only for her opponent to clinch the set \u2013 Dart gave the perfect response in the second.<\/p>\n
As the conditions got cooler and the evening drew in, Dart seemed to have the upper hand in the longer exchanges and Samsonova couldn\u2019t make the most of her serve.<\/p>\n
The world No.35 faced break points on four out of five of her service games in the set and Dart managed to wrestle momentum in her favour.<\/p>\n
Dart\u2019s defence was a particular highlight of her game throughout the first round. Her steal score in the second and third sets \u2013 how often a player wins a point from defence \u2013 was at 46% compared to the draw average of 35%.<\/p>\n
Back on level terms, the British No.5 took an early double break in the decider and was then in a race against the light to get the match done.<\/p>\n
However, serving for it at 5-2, she left the door open for Samsonova to come back, suffering her only break of the third set.<\/p>\n
Frustration was building for the Briton but Samsonova couldn\u2019t shake her struggles on serve. At 30-30 in the following game, she hit a double fault, followed by a forehand error to give Dart her best win of the season.<\/p>\n
Katie Boulter\u2019s match against Leylah Fernandez was interrupted by the light, with the Canadian leading 6-3, 3-3.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Britain\u2019s Harriet Dart marked her HSBC Championships debut with an impressive comeback victory over world No.35 Liudmila Samsonova.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":628270,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-628269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628269","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=628269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628269\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/628270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=628269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=628269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=628269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}