WUHAN, China — US Open champion Aryna Sabalenka’s successful streak on the Wuhan Open rolled on to 19 matches when she beat Liudmila Samsonova 6-3, 6-2 on Thursday to advance to the quarterfinals of the WTA 1000-level event.
The highest-ranked Sabalenka’s streak contains successful titles at Wuhan in 2018, 2019 and 2024.
Earlier, Jessica Pegula recovered from an early service break within the third set to beat Ekaterina Alexandrova 7-5, 3-6, 6-3 and advance to the ultimate eight. The sixth-seeded Pegula, who misplaced within the China Open semifinals final week, leveled the deciding set at 2-2 then gained 4 of the final 5 video games for victory.
The win over No. 9 Alexandrova got here a day after Pegula wanted seven match factors to beat fellow American Hailey Baptiste within the second spherical.
It was Pegula’s sixth straight three-set match, and for the fifth time, she gained.
“I am unable to keep in mind the final time I performed two units,” Pegula mentioned. “However I have been competing actually arduous, and I have been taking part in quite a lot of actually good gamers. It was completely different situations immediately with the roof closed, and I feel it took us a short time to get adjusted.”
In night time matches, No. 2 Iga Swiatek was scheduled to play Belinda Bencic and No. 3 Coco Gauff, coming off a semifinal loss to eventual champion Amanda Anisimova on the China Open final week, was attributable to face Zhang Shuai.
