Coco Gauff and Jasmine Paolini were among the winners in the lower half of the draw on Sunday on the WTA 1000 China Open, in which the only seeds of staggering Elena Rybakina and Veronika Kudermetova were and both Paula Badosa and Barbora Krejcikova.
The circumstances were so slow, what I feel, she is doing well, because she likes to take the ball so early. So I felt that my gravity didn’t do much with her as the balls got older. I discovered that when I had new balls, I would win two or three games in a row. I think the most difficult part was only to do with the circumstances, and try to feel like I could hit her, but I couldn’t do that so well today, because I felt that I was doing earlier this year. Coco Gauff
Gauff is the title defender and not 2 seeds in Beijing, and she was seriously challenged by Leylah Fernandez, the 25 seed, but finally closed the Canadian, 6-4 4-6 7-5, in a very tight match that lasted 2 hours and 46 minutes.
The French Open Winner was forced to go the distance against the 2021 US Open -finalist, overcoming a second set that stumbled and struggled to serve the match in the third before he broke Fernandez in the 12th game to finally conquer it.
The 21-year-old American led by a set and a break, and held a match point at 5-2 in the decision maker, only to be back with the persistent, left-handed, Fernandez, but ultimately the upper hand.
“She’s absolutely great tennis,” Gauff said afterwards. “I thought she was aggressive and hit the ball pretty well. She didn’t really give me many free points either.
“I wish I was more aggressive in some times. I could see that she set up aggressiveness in the second. I think I should have put the ball deeper in that 3-2 match at those breakpoints and perhaps tried to let her open.”
While Gauff built a 6-4, 1-0 lead with a break in the second set, the game had followed much of the same pattern as their previous encounters.
Fernandez had her moments of sparkle, but Gauff was able to lock in during the longer trade fairs and the most important points, and she broke for 3-2 lead after changing the defense into a beautiful 20-branch trally, ending with a sharp angular smash.
Although a few double mistakes allowed Fernandez to be equal to 4-4, Gauff responded immediately, so that the management was recovered with a different enchantment of brilliant defense that pulled a sealed drive volley from the Canadian.
Fernandez, however, continued to come and benefited from the first serve percentage of Gauff from 75% to 53% in the second set, so that she could level the game on a set per piece.
They went to toe to toe through the first half of the decision maker, in which they unleashed their best tennis on returning to a compelling piece of game, before Gauff broke through with the first grip of Serve for 4-2, the sealed with the best point of the game, who produced another amazing performance of defense who saw her thread that saw a fight that sees her thread.
Serving before the competition, Gauff sent her forehand for a long time at the match point that led a new exciting revival of Fernandez.
While the double mistakes of the American rose to 9 and her game became passive, the Canadian seemed to have the momentum to get her very first victory ever in their rivalry, but at 5-5 she could not consistently hit Gauff, and with a forehand at the 4th breaking point of the game, the break.
Gaff served before the game before the game and made no mistake, with a daring Serve-en-Volley play that sealed her 3rd match point.
“The circumstances were so slow, what I feel, she is doing well, because she likes to take the ball so early,” Gauff said. “So I felt that my gravity didn’t do much with her as the balls got older. I thought when I had new balls, I would win two or three games in a row.
“I think the most difficult part was only to do with the conditions, and try to feel, like, I could continue her, but I couldn’t do that so well today, as I had like I was doing earlier this year.”
Gauff is then confronted with the No. 15 seed from Switzerland, Belinda Bencic, which fought along the Australian qualifying priscilla Hon, 4-6 6-4 6-3, in 2 hours and 25 minutes, coming from a set and 3-1 down.
The American leads the head-to-head with Bencic, 3-2, including 2-1 in 2025.
6th Seed Jasmine Paolini defeated Sofia Kenin for the first time in 4 meetings to make the last 16 in Beijing
© Lalta Zhang/Getty Images
Jasmine Paolini, the no. 6 Seed from Italy, dropped only 3 games against no. 27 Sofia Kenin to note her first victory over the American in 4 meetings.
Paolini, who had never won a resignation before, and had lost 6-4 6-0 to her in the 3rd round of Dubai in February, came through this meeting, 6-3 6-0, in just 66 minutes, the no 24 Seed from Rornka, the No 24 Seed from Rornka.
Fresh from Spear-Heading Italy’s successful defense of the Billie Jean King Cup in Shenzhen last weekend, Paolini looks in a lock to the WTA final, stimulated by the fall of her nearest rival, Elena Rybakina, in Beijing.
Kazakhse, born in Russia, has passed a bit of an inconsistent year, and on Sunday morning the 8th seed was amazed by Eva Lys, the emerging German, who won no. 10 and threw the race for the WTA Finals wide open with Paolini waiting in the wings to try to close the gap between them.
Paolini is in fact close to catching Rybakina in the race before the end of the annual program that takes place in Saudi Arabia in November.
23-year-old Eva Lys disrupts the No. 8 Seed Elena Rybakina in 3 sets, ending with a single point difference in China
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In one of the more surprising results of this year, Lys Rybakina, 6-3 1-6 6-4, was surprised after a 2-hour and 14-minute match, with the victory held when the last shot of the Kazakh sailed long, so that the two had finished the match, separated by a single point for a single point for the German.
“I have already surpassed myself,” said 23-year-old Lys later. “Being for the first time in the fourth round is a nice feeling, so I just enjoy everything. I enjoy the fans, the good, large courts – I’m just very happy.”
After a series of breaks between the two, Lys was determined to take a 4-3 lead late in the first set, the first time in the game there was successive Golds and Brak for the 4th time to rise 5-3 before he held in the next game to take the opening set.
The no. 8 seeds, responded quickly in the second and won the first 2 games, but Lys broke back before Rybakina broke back to love and then won the last 4 games of the set to force a decision-maker, who became a rope pulling, with Momentum that constantly shifted.
After Lys was broken to fall on the back 4-3, she immediately returned with her 6th break of the game and then took the last 3 games and Rybakina broke for a last 7th time to close the upset victory.
The German finished with 95 points won, which was only one more than Rybakina’s 94, and both won 13 games.
In the last 16, Lys will be confronted with the American McCartney Kessler, against whom she leads 1-0 in their head-to-head, after she won their only meeting in Japan last year in 3 sets.
Kessler would have preferred to arrive in the 4th round with a clean victory under her belt, but came through as a result of the pension of Barbora Krejcikova in the third set of their game on Sunday.
With the American lead of 1-6 7-5, 3-0, the 2-way Grand SLAM champion from the Czech Republic chose to stop because a left knee injury sustained in the opening match.
Initially, Krejcikova had packed his knee heavily and chose to continue playing, to break Kessler twice and to win the opener in 37 minutes, but after the American left the court to re-group, Kessler jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the second, her reset.
The Czech reacted by winning 4 games in a row to go a set and one collapsed, and saw ready for the victory when Kessler increased, and won 8 of the next 9 games to take the second set after 66 minutes and then ran to a 3-0 lead in the decision-maker.
At that time, Krejcikova found that the risk of continuing with an worsening knee was not worth it, and retired, as a result of which Kessler was sent to her 2nd career WTA 1000 4th round to tackle Lys.
Karolina Muchova, the 13th seed, went ahead to meet Amanda Ansimova after Paula Badosa retired in the first set with a hip injury on Sunday
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Later Paula Badosa joined Krejcikova on the sidelines, when the no. 18 seed from Spain was forced to retire while he left the 13th placed Karolina Muchova of the Czech Republic, 4-2, with a left hip injury.
Muchova is now confronted with the No. 3 Seed, America’s Amanda Anisimova, who was pushed to the limit by the Chinese Wildcard Zhang Shuai, late on Sunday evening, but she saw the challenge of the veteran in style, 7-6 (11) 6-0.
It was a match of two halves victory for Anisimova against a chased opponent, who then admitted that she was not physically not 100% good.
An epic first set that lasted 63 minutes made way for a dominant second version through the 2-time Grand Slam Runner-Up, with the 1 hour and 27 minutes of win that brought her to the last 16 for the second consecutive year.
“I was really happy with how I could fight through it and find my rhythm there,” said Anisimova afterwards while praising Zhang as a ‘great player and great athlete’.
Last year, Zhang was a quarter-finalist in an attempt that her singles career resulted in, and she ran out of the gates by winning 8 of the first 10 points, and led 5-3 when, only 2 points of staying behind, came alive, Anisimova and won 3 straight matches and eventually pushed things into the Breker.
In total, 9 set points for them both came in the tiebreak – 5 for Anisimova and 4 for Zhang – but the powerful forehand of the American finally made the difference.
On 11/11 she hit one that was too big for Zhang to handle, and the world no 4 Furned a winner to finally end the set, after which the rest history was in the form a bagel when the Chinese fell away.
De Tiebreak was the longest in the career of Anisimova at the tour level in total points, and the equal longest for Zhang, who also played 24 points against Oceane Dodin in Nurnberg in 2017.
Anisimova is now 9-3 in Tiebreak-sets in 2025 and is 11-0 in WTA 1000 matches where she won the first set, while the victory was also her 150th of her career at the tour level, and she is the 3rd player born since 2000 to achieve that performance after Iga Swiateek and Gauff.
World No. 4 Amanda Anisimova found her way along Wild-Card Zhang Shuai in the later match on Sunday evening in the National Tennis Center in Beijing
© Fred Lee/Getty Images
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