Coco Gauff enchants Berlin at first go!
That’s how you play your way into the hearts of the audience! US superstar Coco Gauff made her first appearance at the bett1open on Wednesday - and she used to quickly become a fan favorite. Gauff defeated her US colleague Ann Li 6:2 and 7:6 (7:2). She played great tennis. And afterwards she raved about the city of Berlin, the museums, the culture and the aura. “I’ll come back more often”, she promised. But for now, she is still here. The success over Ann Li has led her into the round of 16 of the WTA 500 tournament, which is endowed with 757,00 US dollars, on the grounds of the LTTC “Rot-Weiß”. There, the Chinese Xinyu Wang will be waiting for Gauff on the grass of the Steffi Graf Stadium, on Thursday from 3 p.m. at the earliest.
In contrary, the last German left in the main draw, had to bow out of the tournament. One day after her two-set win over Garbine Muguruza, petkovic lost 4:6, 5:6 to Aliaksandra Sasnovich. It was an “out with applause” for Petkovic. There was an excellent atmosphere in the very well-filled stands. Also because Petkovic tried everything. But her serve in particular was less reliable than the day before. Nevertheless, she took a good feeling with her from Berlin. The top 50 seems to be within reach again: “That almost makes me a little euphoric.”
More relived than euphoric, however, was co-favorite Karolina Pliskova (Czech Republic) after a nail-biter. She won the tiebreak of the deciding set 9:7 against the fighting Canadian Bianca Andreescu. Pliskova had won the first set 6:4, but lost the second 2:6.
Recht kurzen Prozess machte im letzten Achtelfinale des Tages die an zwei gesetzte Maria Sakkari (Griechenland). Gegen sie war Daria Saville (Australien) beim 6:1 im ersten Satz ohne Chance. Der zweite Durchgang war offener, aber letztlich war Sakkari zu gut und gewann 7:5.
In the last match of the round of 16 of the day, second seed Maria Sakkari (Greece) made short work of the match. Against her, Daria Saville (Australia) was without a chance at 6:1 in the first set. The second set was more open, but in the Sakkari was too good and won 7:5.
Daria Kasatkina needed one set to start (5:7), after that she did not let Ekaterina Alexandrova threaten her and dominated 6:1 and 6:1.
On Thursday at 11a.m. the matches start again. Four singles will then be played for a place in the quarter-finals.
The first match will be Ons Jabeur (Tunisia) against Alycia Parks (USA). Spectacular tennis can be expected, especially from the charismatic Tunisian. This will be followed by the duel between the Olympic champion Belinda Bencic against Anna Kalinskaya. The first Match in the afternoon will then be the second Berlin appearance of Coco Gauff (against Xinyu Wang). After that, Liudmila Samsonova and Veronika Kudermetova will compete in the Steffi Graf Stadium.
But it is quite possible that there will be much more action on court one at almost the same time. That’s where Sabine Lisicki will play alongside Bianca Andreescu in the quarterfinals of the doubles competition. Asia Muhammad (USA) and Ena Shibahara (Japan) will stand in the way of Lisicki and Andreescu.