Iga Swiatek cruises past Danielle Collins in Cincinnati, Jessica Pegula passes test

CINCINNATI – Iga Swiatek made quick work of qualifier Danielle Collins as she raced to a 6-1, 6-0 victory on Wednesday to reach the Cincinnati Open third round, as third seed Jessica Pegula survived a tough opening match.

The Polish world No. 1 broke the 29-year-old Collins seven times, faced only two break points and wrapped up a one-sided match in a tidy 59 minutes.

“I feel like I was really solid and I didn’t make a lot of unforced errors,” she said in her on-court interview.

“I really like playing that way because it gives me confidence and I can be proactive from the beginning to the end, so I am pretty proud of today.”

Swiatek swept to a 3-0 lead in the opener and, after both players swopped service breaks, the top-seeded Pole held to love before closing out the set with her fourth break.

It was more one-way traffic in the second set, as a fully focused Swiatek moved into cruise control and barely broke a sweat in a match she ended in style with a break to love.

Earlier, Pegula had her hands full in her first match since winning the Canadian Open on Sunday, as the American overcame a slow start to secure a gutsy 6-7 (2-7), 6-2, 6-3 win over Italian qualifier Martina Trevisan.

Pegula comfortably lost the first-set tiebreak but showed her quality in the second set before charging out to a 3-0 lead in the decider en route to her 27th hard-court win in 2023. She said: “Since Wimbledon, I think I’ve made more of a conscious effort mentally to play more aggressively and I’ve just been seeing the ball, for whatever reason, pretty well.”

In the evening, second seed Aryna Sabalenka fended off a third-set comeback attempt by qualifier Ann Li of the United States to notch a 7-5, 2-6, 6-4 victory and set up a meeting with Russia’s Daria Kasatkina.

After trading the first two sets, the Belarusian appeared in control when she jumped out to a 5-1 lead in the decider but her 192nd-ranked opponent had other ideas, winning three straight games to whittle the lead down to a single game.

Despite the rising pressure, the hard-hitting Sabalenka kept her cool, sealing the win with an unreturnable serve on match point to improve to 42-9 in 2023.

She said: “For me, it takes some time to adjust to the surface. I was really happy to win this match. She played unbelievable tennis.”

Fourth seed Elena Rybakina also came through a three-set slugfest to defeat Latvian Jelena Ostapenko 6-7 (6-8), 6-2, 6-4 to reach the round of 16.

The Kazakh crushed 11 aces to raise her season-leading tally to 392 and will next face Italy’s Jasmine Paolini for a place in the quarter-finals.

Veteran Venus Williams started strongly against Zheng Qinwen before succumbing to a 1-6, 6-2, 6-1 defeat at the hands of the Chinese player. The 43-year-old American received a wild card into the US Open earlier on Wednesday and will be competing at the final Grand Slam of 2023 in New York for a record-extending 24th time.

In other action, American teenager Coco Gauff, seeded seventh, breezed past Egyptian Mayar Sherif 6-2, 6-2, Wimbledon champion Marketa Vondrousova beat Anastasia Potapova 6-4, 6-2 and Kasatkina overcame lucky loser Varvara Gracheva 6-3, 6-1. REUTERS