Jabeur rides roller coaster on way to Zhengzhou last eight
SHANGHAI: World number seven Ons Jabeur defied a bad knee on Thursday to finally defeat Italian Lucia Bronzetti 6-3, 7-6 (7/5) and reach the quarter-finals of the Zhengzhou Open. Playing with her right knee taped, the Tunisian three-time Grand Slam finalist failed to serve out the victory on three occasions and needed five match points …
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SHANGHAI: World number seven Ons Jabeur defied a bad knee on Thursday to finally defeat Italian Lucia Bronzetti 6-3, 7-6 (7/5) and reach the quarter-finals of the Zhengzhou Open. Playing with her right knee taped, the Tunisian three-time Grand Slam finalist failed to serve out the victory on three occasions and needed five match points to move past the 63rd-ranked Italian in just under two hours. A champion in Ningbo two weeks ago, Jabeur will next face eighth seed Daria Kasatkina, who beat home player Bai Zhuoxuan 6-2, 6-4.
“It was a tough finish obviously, she’s a great player, such a fighter,” said the 29-year-old Jabeur. “So I’m glad that I got to finish in two (sets). It would have been a different story if it was three sets. We will learn a lot from this match. “I tried to do my best, it’s the end of the season and it’s very, very tough with the knee. Today it wasn’t 100 percent.” A seesaw opening set saw a combined five breaks of serve but it was Jabeur who carved out a 5-2 gap and the Tunisian took a one-set lead after 45 minutes.
The fourth seed earned a double-break lead in the second set and looked on track for a smooth victory when she served for the match at 5-2. But Bronzetti had other ideas and snatched the next three games, breaking Jabeur twice to level the frame for five-all, saving a match point along the way. Jabeur stopped the bleeding as she used her signature drop shot to maximum effect to break Bronzetti and put herself in position to serve for the win for a third time. Still the North African could not close as Bronzetti saved three more match points and broke serve on a Jabeur double fault to take the set into a tiebreak.
Jabeur finally closed out the 74-minute second set, and the contest, on her fifth match point. Kasatkina also had to overcome a second-set fightback from her opponent and needed four match points before she completed a 90-minute victory over 117th-ranked Bai. The 26-year-old Russian has lost her last five matches to Jabeur. “Ons is an amazing player, she’s creative on the court and you never know what to expect from her,” said Kasatkina. Germany’s Laura Siegemund upset 11th seed and recent Beijing runner-up Liudmila Samsonova 3-6, 6-2, 6-1 to book a quarter-final against Italian Jasmine Paolini.
Earlier, Sebastian Korda reached his first Masters semi-final as he battled back to tame fast-rising fellow American Ben Shelton 6-7 (10/12), 6-2, 7-6 (8/6) in Shanghai on Thursday. The 26th seed finally sealed the quarter-final on his sixth match point and plays Poland’s 16th seed Hubert Hurkacz for a place in Sunday’s final. With the centre-court roof closed because of rain in Shanghai, the first set went to a tie break after they exchanged breaks in the 11th and 12th games. US Open semi-finalist Shelton, who uncorked a serve clocked at 236 kilometres (150 miles) per hour earlier in the set, had Korda on the back foot throughout a gripping tie break.
The pressure finally told when the recently turned 21-year-old Shelton unleashed an ace on his fifth set point that Korda could only watch whizz by. The 23-year-old Korda, whose father Petr reached two in the world at his peak, recovered to break Shelton’s big serve at the start of the second set and raced to level the quarter-final at one set all. Korda broke the 19th seed at the start of the deciding set and then dug himself out of a hole, saving three break points to extend his lead to 3-1 and then 4-2.
But Korda, whose only previous ATP title came in 2021 in Parma, allowed Shelton back in again and they went to another tie break. Korda let slip five match points from 6-1 in the tie break before belatedly sealing an absorbing encounter in just under three hours. In the first quarter-final, Hurkacz similarly fought back to defeat unseeded Hungarian Fabian Marozsan 4-6, 6-1, 6-3. The Shanghai Masters is back after four years following the pandemic and has witnessed a succession of shocks.
Top seed Carlos Alcaraz was turfed out in the last 16 to follow Daniil Medvedev—beaten by Korda—Holger Rune, Stefanos Tsitsipas and Jannik Sinner out the exit door. There is only one player from the world’s top 10 left in the draw in the form of seventh-ranked Russian Andrey Rublev. The fifth seed faces 32nd seed Ugo Humbert of France in the quarter-finals while 18th seed Grigor Dimitrov—who turfed out Alcaraz—plays 22nd seed Nicolas Jarry. World number one Novak Djokovic skipped the tournament. – AFP
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