{"id":788602,"date":"2026-10-01T14:02:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-01T14:02:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/788602\/"},"modified":"2026-10-01T14:02:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-01T14:02:11","slug":"hunter-birrell-storm-into-second-round-at-china-open","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/788602\/","title":{"rendered":"Hunter, Birrell storm into second round at China Open"},"content":{"rendered":"

Australia’s Storm Hunter and Kimberly Birrell have breezed into the second round of the China Open with straight-sets victories.<\/p>\n

Fresh from winning the Korea Open on Sunday, which shot her world ranking to No.41, Birrell took just 59 minutes to trounce Japan’s 361st-ranked Aoi Ito 6-1 6-1 in Beijing on Thursday.<\/p>\n

And Hunter needed seven minutes more to cruise past China’s Lin Yujun 6-2 6-1.<\/p>\n

Both Australians will face far sterner tests in the second round at the 128-player hardcourt event.<\/p>\n

Birrell takes on 18th seed Marie Bouzkova of Czechia, while Hunter plays Greek 25th seed Maria Sakkari. Both rivals had first-round byes.<\/p>\n

\"Kimberly<\/p>\n

Kimberly Birrell took less than an hour to negotiate her first-round encounter. (AP PHOTO<\/a>)<\/p>\n

The news was bad, however, for Australia’s Daria Kasatkina, with the world No.87 falling in a tight three-setter against Spain’s Paula Badosa, 4-6 7-6 (9-7) 6-4.<\/p>\n

Badosa converted eight of 10 break points while Kasatkina could only capitalise on eight out of 19.<\/p>\n

In a match commensurate with what is now the pair’s 4-4 head-to-head record, Kasatkina took the first set in converting three of nine break points to Badosa’s two of three.<\/p>\n

Badosa only required the same strike rate in a gripping second set, while successfully defending three of the five break points against her own serve, then converted all four break opportunities in claiming the third set.<\/p>\n

The Spaniard will next play 24th seeded Latvian Jelena Ostapenko.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australia’s Storm Hunter and Kimberly Birrell have breezed into the second round of the China Open with straight-sets…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":788603,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[428,21898,100689,13368,86431,10300,101,98997,118,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-788602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-australia","tag-daria-kasatkina","tag-kimberly-birrell","tag-maria-sakkari","tag-marie-bouzkova","tag-paula-badosa","tag-sports","tag-storm-hunter","tag-tennis","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788602","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=788602"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788602\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/788603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=788602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=788602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=788602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}