Defending champion Petra Kvitova recovered from a set and a break down to beat Annika Beck 4-6, 6-3, 6-3 in the first round of the New Haven Open on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The third-seeded Kvitova dropped the first set and was broken in the first game of the second before staging the comeback in a match that was delayed due to rain on Monday.<\/p>\n
“I wasn’t great, for sure,” the 2011 Wimbledon champion said. “I wasn’t feeling very well. I wasn’t positive during the game and then I had to fight and try to come back in the match.”<\/p>\n
Beck entered the draw as a lucky loser when Poland’s Urszula Radwanska withdrew Monday.<\/p>\n
While Kvitova narrowly survived, No. 2-seeded Angelique Kerber lost her second-round match 6-2, 6-4 to Russia’s Elena Vesnina. Seventh-seeded Sabine Lisicki fell 7-5, 6-3 to Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova in the final match of the night.<\/p>\n
Vesnina, a 2009 finalist, won the first three games to take control of the first set and converted six service breaks in the match. Kerber hit a forehand just wide on match point and threw her racket in disgust. The call was upheld after a challenge.<\/p>\n
Vesnina, seeking her third singles title this year, said the win over a top-10 opponent bodes well for her heading into next week’s U.S. Open.<\/p>\n
“Maybe it’s just my time to play good,” she said.<\/p>\n
Kerber, who lost in the third round in Cincinnati and the second round in Toronto, had hoped to get in a couple more hard-court matches to improve her game before the Open.<\/p>\n
“It’s, of course, not easy to lose a match like this when you are not feeling so good and you couldn’t find your rhythm,” she said. “Next week is a big tournament, but I will try to go on the court tomorrow and work and try to improve my game more. I will try to take my rhythm back.”<\/p>\n
Vesnina will face Klara Zakopalova of the Czech Republic in the quarterfinals. Zakopalova upset eighth-seeded Dominika Cibulkova in the first round before beating 19-year-old Monica Puig 6-4, 6-1 on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Her recent strong play earned her the 32nd and final seed next week at Flushing Meadows.<\/p>\n
“I have never passed the first round at the U.S. Open,” she said. “So, my goal is to play a good first round there and then we’ll see.”<\/p>\n
Former top-ranked singles player Martina Hingis and Daniela Hantuchova lost in a first-round doubles match 6-3, 6-1 to Cara Black and Vania King.<\/p>\n
It was their fourth tournament together since Hingis announced her comeback, and the Swiss star said she is not planning to expand her return to singles play.<\/p>\n
“I have always said that I don’t want to play singles anymore, for sure,” she said. “And after tonight, it’s definitely 200 percent, no way. Because, you just have to be so hungry.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Defending champion Petra Kvitova recovered from a set and a break down to beat Annika Beck 4-6, 6-3, 6-3 in the first round of the New Haven Open on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The third-seeded Kvitova dropped the first set and was broken in the first game of the second before staging the comeback in a match that was delayed due to rain on Monday.<\/p>\n
“I wasn’t great, for sure,” the 2011 Wimbledon champion said. “I wasn’t feeling very well. I wasn’t positive during the game and then I had to fight and try to come back in the match.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":8902,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/976","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=976"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/976\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}