Svitolina beat Azarenka again

Ukraine's Elina Svitolina advanced to the second round of the Washington hard court tennis tournament with a prize pool of $780,637. In the most interesting match of the first round among the ladies, the semi-finalist from the last edition of "Wimbledon" Svitolina beat the former leader in the world rankings Victoria Azarenka from Belarus with 7:6(2), 6:4 in an hour and 48 minutes of play. expected, after the end of the meeting there was no handshake between the two because of the ongoing Russian invasion of the territory of Ukraine and the support provided by Belarus for the war.

The first set of the match went through a series of twists and turns. Svitolina took a 3-0 game lead with two breaks, but Azarenka took the next five games. There followed a new return of the Ukrainian in the match, who pulled with 6:5 and served to win the set, but allowed Azarenka to make another breakthrough, at zero. In the tiebreak, however, the advantage was for Svitolina, who won with 7:2 points.

In the second set, the breaks continued one after the other, with the servers losing serve on nine out of ten occasions. It wasn't until the fifth game that Svitolina took her serve, which ultimately made the difference between the two. In the second round of the tournament, the Ukrainian will play No. 5 seed Daria Kasatkina of Russia, against whom she has seven wins in seven matches.

Kasatkina prevailed at the start over the Belgian Elise Mertens with 6:3, 7:5 in an hour and 44 minutes. The Russian trailed 0-2 early in the match, but then took 10 of the next 12 games. She missed four match points on her serve in the second set, but was able to close out the match on the first chance she got on Mertens' serve.