Top-seed Caroline Wozniacki beat American Taylor Townsend 6-1, 7-6 (7-4) in Auckland.
AFP/Auckland
Caroline Wozniacki and Venus Williams strolled into the quarter-finals of the Auckland Classic yesterday with second-round straight-sets wins.
Venus Williams was made to work at the start of her match with Japan’s fleet-footed Kurumi Nara, dropping serve twice before shifting up a gear to cruise home 6-4, 6-1. Although the win was comfortable, 34-year-old Williams was not satisfied with the way her usually venomous serve misfired, delivering a less than 50 percent success rate.
She plays Russian Elena Vesnina in the quarter-finals after the Russian breezed past Croatian teenager Ana Konjuh 6-3, 6-1. Head-to-head, Vesnina leads Williams 2-1 although Williams won their last encounter in Dubai 11 months ago.
The pressure was reversed for top-seed Caroline Wozniacki who cruised through the first set against rising American Taylor Townsend and then struggled to get home in two sets 6-1, 7-6 (7-4).
Wozniacki’s first serve worked a treat with an 81 per cent success rate and no double faults, but she had difficulty dealing with Townsend’s switch to go to the net more in the second set. The left-handed American broke serve to lead 4-2 in the second set but double-faulted when serving for the set, and Wozniacki came through to close out the tiebreak with an ace.
“The second set I broke her and thought it’s going well for me and all of a sudden I see myself down 5-2 and she started playing really well. All of a sudden I had to fight my way back,” Wozniacki said.
Of the other seeded players still alive, seventh seed Coco Vandeweghe beat last year’s semi-finalist Kirsten Flipkens of Belgium 6-1, 6-7 (7-5), 7-5 while in an all-American clash Lauren Davis disposed of sixth seed Sloane Stephens 1-6, 6-4, 6-1.
Zvonareva reaches first WTA QF since 2012
Former world number two Vera Zvonareva, who has dropped to 250 in the rankings, reached her first WTA quarter-final since 2012 at the Shenzhen Open yesterday, overcoming Turkish qualifier Cagla Buyukakcay in straight sets.
But the 6-3, 7-6 second round scoreline belied a hard-fought match for the Russian against a relative unknown who is ranked more than 100 slots above her. Both players struggled to hold serve and in the second set Zvonareva, 4-1 down, needed 10 deuces and saved five break points before winning a marathon sixth game.
The Turk took the next game and a 5-2 lead, but Zvonareva then went on a four-game rampage, breaking her opponent first to love and then to 15, establishing a 6-5 advantage and serving for the match—only to be broken to 15 herself and sending the set into a tie-break.
The 30-year-old dominated from the start and took a 6-2 lead but lost her first three match points before finally prevailing in two hours, three minutes.
Zvonareva reached the finals of both Wimbledon and the US Open in 2010, but her career has since been blighted by illness and injury and she is attempting to start a 2015 comeback at the $500,000 tournament.
She will face Swiss number eight seed Timea Bacsinszky in the quarter-final. Top seed Simona Halep, Romania’s world number three, needed just over an hour to dispose of 17-year-old Russian wildcard Natalia Vikhlyantseva, ranked 584, 6-2, 6-2.
