Ukrainian qualifier Dayana Yastremska and Czech giant-killer Linda Noskova continued their stunning runs into the quarter-finals of the Australian Open on Monday.
Yastremska beat two-time champion Victoria Azarenka 7-6(6), 6-4, while 18th-ranked Elina Svitolina was trailing Noskova 0-3 when she retired with a back injury.
Azarenka served for the first set twice and had two set points at 6-5 but couldn’t take them and Yastremska won the opening set on her second chance after 74 minutes. The Ukrainian then led 3-0 in the second set but Yastremska won six of the next seven games to clinch victory, ending with 37 winners.
“I think I need to take a thousand breaths because my heart I think is going to jump out of my body,” Yastremska said.
“During the match, I was imagining how I lost already like 25 times. I was losing the tiebreak, second set I was losing, I always felt I was running behind the train. But because I’m a little bit of a fighter I think I won this match.”
There was no handshake, as is the convention between Ukrainian and Russian and Belarusian players, though Yastremska raised her racket toward Azarenka.
The first game of the Noskova-Svitolina match lasted 11 minutes and contained 20 points. Noskova broke serve and held for 2-0 before Svitolina had a timeout and received treatment on her lower back.
When she resumed, the Ukrainian’s serve speed was well down and her movement appeared compromised. After being broken for a second time and fighting back tears, Svitolina shook Noskova’s hand and retired.
Svitolina said the injury happened at the end of the first game.
“I got a spasm, like a shooting pain,” she said.
“Couldn’t do anything, completely locked my back, just very sad. I had some injuries to my back before where it just was tiredness the next day of the match, but this one was really out of nowhere. I felt like someone shot me in the back.”
Noskova beat top-ranked Iga Swiatek in the third round.
“Obviously today was not the way I had planned to win,” she said.
Zheng power
Zheng Qinwen too cruised into the quarter finals with a commanding 6-0, 6-3 victory over Frenchwoman Oceane Dodin on Monday to match her best performance in a grand slam.
The 12th seeded Zheng is the highest-ranked player left in the top half of the bracket, where all four women who won on Monday reached the last eight at Melbourne Park for the first time.
The Chinese barely put a foot wrong in the 59-minute masterclass on Rod Laver Arena and will meet Russian Anna Kalinskaya next. Kalinskaya beat No. 26 Jasmine Paolini 6-4, 6-2.
“Second time in a quarter final, I have more experience but I want to focus on the moment,” said Zheng, who can emulate her idol Li Na by winning the tournament and has received plenty of tips from her compatriot who is at Melbourne Park. “That’s what she told me to do ... She’s a really classic, powerful woman. She looks much more beautiful than when I saw her on TV when I was young.”
With inputs from AP/PTI, Reuters
Protest delays game
Melbourne: A protester threw papers onto an Australian Open court and briefly delayed the fourth-round match between Germany’s Alexander Zverev and Cameron Norrie of Britain on Monday.
A person wearing a blue shirt, cap and face mask threw anti-war pamphlets from the stands onto the court behind the baseline during the sixth game of the third set on Margaret Court Arena.
Printed in black on the white pages was the message Free Palestine: “While you’re watching tennis bombs are dropping on Gaza.”
Ball kids gathered up the papers and the match continued after a short delay. Security escorted the protestor away.
Tennis Australia said it was awaiting more information before commenting.
The Israel-Hamas war began with Hamas’ attack in southern Israel on October 7. Palestinian militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took about 250 hostages back to Gaza. The Palestinian toll from the war has soared past 25,000, the health ministry in the Gaza Strip said on Sunday.
AP/PTI
