Australian world No 1 Ashleigh Barty saved a match point as she battled back to defeat Slovakia’s Kristina Kucova on Thursday and reach the...
Australian world No 1 Ashleigh Barty saved a match point as she battled back to defeat Slovakia’s Kristina Kucova on Thursday and reach the third round of the Miami Open.
Top-seeded Barty, the 2019 Miami champion and French Open winner, dispatched 149th-ranked Kucova 6-3, 4-6, 7-5, advancing to a match with another Grand Slam winner, Latvia’s 54th-ranked Jelena Ostapenko who beat Belgian Kirsten Flipkens 6-2, 5-7, 6-3.
Barty fired 15 aces, two in a rally from 0-40 down in the final game, to defeat Kucova after two hours and 27 minutes.
“There’s nothing like coming through a test like that,” Barty said. “It was important in that match to stick to working and trying to figure it out as I went on. (I’m) just really happy I never gave up and happy I gave myself a chance to stay in the hunt.”
The 24-year-old Aussie avoided her first three-match losing streak since 2014 after having fallen to Czech Karolina Muchova in last month’s Australian Open quarter-finals and American Danielle Collins at Adelaide the following week.
Kucova, whose only win over a top-10 foe came five years ago, forced a third set after Barty sent a forehand long to surrender the lone break of the second set.
In the third, Barty sent a...
