Croatia’s Donna Vekic has defeated the defending champion and world no. 2 Petra Kvitova to reach the semifinals in the Premier level St Petersburg tournament.
Kvitova would have been feeling the effects of a tough campaign in Australia on top of rushing from Melbourne to St Petersburg to compete in the event.
Vekic reached the semifinal at the Brisbane International, also a Premier level event. She did, however, have a disappointing Australian Open losing to Australia’s Kimberly Birrell in the second round.
In this match, Kvitova hit too many unforced errors with 42 to 17. On the winners count it was 20-12 to Kvitova, but the unforced errors way outweighed the winners.
Vekic kept the pressure on Kvitova as she chased balls and kept making the Czech player hit one more ball, often resulting in an error. Vekic won five of nine break points, Kvitova just one of four.
With the 6-4, 6-1 win Vekic claimed her first win over a world ranked no. 2 and she now advances to the semifinals where she will play the winner of Daria Kasatkina and Vera Zvonareva. Kasatkina is yet to win a match in 2019 yet finds herself in the quarterfinals.
In the earlier quarterfinal, Aryna Sabalenka was too good for Ekaterina Alexandrova taking the match 6-3, 6-4.
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