GUADALAJARA, Mexico - Wimbledon champion Elena Rybakina kept her hopes of making the WTA Finals alive with a 7-6 (7-5), 6-2 win over Karolina Pliskova in the first round of the Guadalajara Open on Tuesday.

In a clash between two of the top servers on tour - they have combined for 600 aces this season according to the WTA website - Pliskova started off strongly. The Czech served for the opening set while leading 5-3 but was unable to finish the job as the Kazakhstani battled back to force a first-set tiebreak.

Pliskova issued one of her six double faults of the match on set point in the tie breaker and Rybakina cruised in the second set behind her powerful groundstrokes and booming serve.

Next up for Rybakina is a meeting with American Jessica Pegula, who came out on the winning side of their only previous meeting at the Miami Open in 2022.

The WTA Finals are contested by the game’s top eight players and the 23-year-old Rybakina can book a spot there by winning the title in Mexico. The Finals kick off on Oct 31 in Fort Worth, Texas.

Meanwhile, Canadian Bianca Andreescu rallied to beat Petra Kvitova 3-6, 6-2, 6-0 and will meet either Rybakina or Pegula in the third round.

After a strong start, Kvitova’s serve began to betray her and she issued eight double faults and was broken for an eighth time in the final game of the contest to end her season.

“The first set kind of just went past me,” Andreescu said. “(Kvitova) was hitting some very big shots, and her serve was very effective, and I felt like my emotions got the better of me as well towards the end of the first set. But I bounced back. 

“I just wanted to make her play as much as I could, use my serve to my advantage, and just put pressure on her return, and I think I did that really well. And just fighting, competing really well.”

Maria Sakkari also progressed to the third round on Tuesday, ending a three-match losing run with a 6-4, 6-4 victory over Ukraine’s Marta Kostyuk.

Former Wimbledon finalist Eugenie Bouchard beat American qualifier Kayla Day 7-5, 6-3 to set up a second-round clash with 12th-seeded Jelena Ostapenko.

The victory by the Canadian wild card was her first at a WTA 1,000 level event since Dubai in 2019.

The win comes as a relief after the 28-year-old Bouchard, whose career has been plagued with injuries, was forced to retire midway through her match at the Transylvania Open last week with a hip injury. REUTERS, AFP