Doha, Feb 12 (IANS) Former French Open winner Jelena Ostapenko scored her first Top-10 win since 2023 with a 6-2, 6-2 defeat of No. 4 seed Jasmine Paolini of Italy in a women’s singles third-round match of the Qatar Open here on Wednesday. The 27-year-old Latvian trailed 2-0 in the second set but responded by reeling off the last six games of the match to seal victory in just 63 minutes.
In other matches in the WTA 1000 event, American sixth-seed Jessica Pegula defeated 10th seed Daria Kasatkina 6-3, 7-5 while fifth-seed Elena Rybakina of Kazakhstan also advanced with a 7-6(1), 6-2 win over Rebecca Sramkova.
Having already posted consecutive wins this week for the first time since reaching last year’s Wimbledon quarterfinals, Ostapenko has now notched her 12th career Top 5 win.
The last time she defeated a Top 10 opponent was in the 2023 Beijing third round, where she bested Jessica Pegula 6-4, 6-2. She will next face either Ons Jabeur or wild card Sofia Kenin. Only two Top 5 seeds now remain in the Doha draw: No. 2 Iga Swiatek and No. 5 Elena Rybakina, last year’s finalists, who are on course for a quarterfinal collision. Here are the key takeaways from Ostapenko’s upset.
Ostapenko has a strong history in Doha. Back in 2016, as an 18-year-old ranked No. 88, she reached her first WTA Tour final here; in 2022, she returned to the semifinals. Four of her 22 Top-10 career wins have come on these courts, including a memorable 6-2, 6-2 rout of Garbiñe Muguruza in 2022 in which Ostapenko fired 39 winners in 16 games.
Ostapenko’s tally of 22 winners (equalling her 22 unforced errors) didn’t quite match the 39 of the Muguruza match but was enough to overpower Paolini, who mustered only nine. As well as the cascade of clean return winners fans are used to seeing fly from the Ostapenko racquet, her fine serving stood out: she landed nine aces and dropped just seven points behind her first delivery.
This time last year, Ostapenko had just returned to the Top 10 after a five-year gap. But she is in Doha as the unseeded World No. 37, having fallen out of the Top 30 for the first time since 2021 this week.
After reaching her sixth Grand Slam quarterfinal at Wimbledon last year, she did not post back-to-back wins again for seven months. However, that period also included a two-month injury layoff: Ostapenko ended her 2024 singles season in September and missed the entire Asian swing due to an abdominal injury.
–IANS
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