Former winners Petra Kvitova and Simona Halep battled through brisk desert winds to advance into the quarter-finals of the Dubai Championships on Wednesday. Second seed Kvitova outlasted American qualifier Jennifer Brady 7-5, 1-6, 6-3. Crowd favourite and third seed Halep coped with the gusty conditions the Aviation Club as she beat Lesia Tsurenko 6-3, 7-5, breaking seven times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The 2015 finalist won a monster game late in the second set, holding for 5-5 after seven deuces plus two set points for her American opponent.Pliskova broke a game later but dropped serve herself to force a tie-breaker; the decider ended on a first match point after Riske double-faulted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fifth seed Angelique Kerber, a semi-finalist on her last two appearances here, lost to Hsieh Su-Wei 5-7, 6-4, 6-0.The German former world number one dropped serve seven times in the one-and-three-quarter hour contest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Spain\u2019s Carla Suarez Navarro made quick work of Kristina Mladenovic, surprise conqueror of Australian Open champion Naomi Osaka, sending the Dubai-based Frenchwoman out 7-5, 7-5.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBut, well, point by point, game by game, I just tried to fight, tried to relax a little bit. Meanwhile, Kvitova, who won the Dubai trophy in 2013, had not played on the WTA Tour since reaching the St Petersburg quarter-finals a fortnight ago. \u201cWhen I came here, I didn\u2019t really have many days of practice, to be honest,\u201d the two-time Wimbledon winner said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI had something different to do in my life. I wasn\u2019t really that prepared for this tournament. \u201cBut I\u2019m happy I was able to get two wins. It\u2019s great when you\u2019re not playing your best and you still find a way to win.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Former winners Petra Kvitova and Simona Halep battled through brisk desert winds to advance into the quarter-finals of the Dubai Championships on Wednesday. Second seed Kvitova outlasted American qualifier Jennifer Brady 7-5, 1-6, 6-3. Crowd favourite and third seed Halep coped with the gusty conditions the Aviation Club as she beat Lesia Tsurenko 6-3, 7-5, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":55522,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55521"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55521\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55523,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55521\/revisions\/55523"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}