SEOUL, Sept. 22 (Yonhap) — The 2021 U.S. Open women’s singles champion Emma Raducanu reached the quarterfinals of the WTA stop in Seoul on Thursday, staying alive in a bid for her second career title.
Raducanu, No. 6 seed, defeated Yanina Wickmayer of Belgium 6-3, 7-5 in the round of 16 at the Hana Bank Korea Open at Olympic Park Tennis Center in Seoul.
As she had done in her first round victory over Moyuka Uchijima of Japan on Wednesday, Raducanu almost frittered away an early lead in the second set against Wickmayer, following a relatively breezy win in the first set.
Raducanu went up 3-0 in the second set but allowed Wickmayer to pull even at 4-4, getting broken a couple of times in the process. Wickmayer relied on some strong serves and peppered the court with groundstroke winners in her second-set push.
But Raducanu, who won the U.S. Open as a qualifier without dropping a set, held her ground in late stages. Her serves found some new life and Wickmayer played herself out of the match with costly unforced errors.
Raducanu said afterward she wanted to just take a “hit first, ask questions later” approach.
“My strategy today was to swing for the ball and be loose and not care too much about making mistakes and just accepting them more,” she said. “And I think that I did that better today than yesterday. So I’m quite pleased to see the improvements there. And I think that in the big moments, when it was close, I committed to my shots a lot better and got rewarded for it.”
Raducanu, who had nine aces, said her serves made the difference in the second set.
“I was hitting all my spots pretty well. I wasn’t as predictable today,” she said. “A lot of aces, especially in the second set, helped me get to a big lead and gave me a bit of a cushion.”
Raducanu has not won since that Grand Slam breakthrough. She has nosedived from No. 10 to No. 77 in the world rankings.
Raducanu will face Magda Linette of Poland in the quarterfinals Friday. The two have not yet faced each other.
Earlier Thursday, Victoria Jimenez Kasintseva of Andorra also reached the quarterfinals and awaits the winner of the round of 16 match between the top seed Jelena Ostapenko of Latvia and Anastasia Gasanova of Russia.
The two other quarterfinal matches will feature: Tatjana Maria of Germany against Zhu Lin of China, and Lulu Sun of Switzerland against No. 2 seed Ekaterina Alexandrova of Russia.
Source: Yonhap News Agency