The tournament in Vitoria is left without any Spaniards after the defeats of Lucía Cortez and Carolina Gómez. Ponchet, Eala, Victoria Jiménez and Fruhvitova are unbeatable in the tournament.
The fifth day of the Araba World Tennis Tour was dominated by the sweltering heat, close to 35 degrees, which put the 16 players in the singles and the four doubles pairs battling for a place in the semi-finals to a test.
After the withdrawal of top seed Daria Snigur yesterday, all eyes were on the performance of the French top seed Jessika Ponchet. The player from Bayonne did not fail against Zarina Diyas (1-6, 4-6). The player from Kazakhstan was barely able to counter the forcefulness and strength of the French player who is going from strength to strength in the tournament, firm in her goal of repeating the title won in 2022
Another one of “Star-of-the-day” matches was between Spain’s Lucia Cortez and Rafa Nadal Academy student Alexandra Eala. The 19-year-old Filipina showed great maturity and mental strength to withstand the insufferable heat of the Araba Foru Aldundia centre court at the Peña Vitoriana Tenis Club and turned around every game that went against her. In the first, Cortez enjoyed a 5-2 lead that was dissolved by the tactical change of her rival, which resulted in her loosing the set 5-7. With the same strategy, Eala won the second set 7-5 to reach the quarter-finals. The tournament ran out of Spaniards, after Carolina Gómez also lost to Mexico’s María José Portillo 7-5, 6-1.
Another one of the great performances of the day came from Andorra’s Victoria Jiménez, seeded 7th in the tournament, who easily beat Italy’s Verena Meliss 6-3, 6-3, arriving from the qualifying rounds.
The Czech Linda Fruhvirtova, seeded 3rd, could be the surprise package of the tournament. And she had to sweat it out against the Indian Rutuja Bhosale but closed the match in three sets (6-2, 6-7, 3-6). Lithuanian Justina Mikulskyte also beat Ukrainian Valeiya Strakhova 7-5, 6-1 and is a strong contender to reach the final. The surprise of the day was the Australian Melisa Ercan who beat the 6th seed, Natalija Stevanovic by 6-3,6-3 from Serbia.
The doubles semi-finals have been decided with Eala scoring a double win.
The quarter-finals of the doubles competition featured some exciting and hard-fought matches. Some players in the singles doubled up. This is the case of Alexandra Eala who paired with Estella Cascino beat Bervid and Mair (4-6, -1-6), and have reached the semi-finals. We hope that the overexertion does not take its toll on the young Filipino player.
The favourite pairing of Eden Silva and Valeriya Strakhova won an exciting and tough match against the Belgian duo Kempen-Salden. The match was decided in a hard-fought third set (6-3,1-6,11-9). The Karatancheva-Marcinkevia pairing also did not fail to beat Mikulskyte-Stevanovic, both exhausted by the effort in their singles matches in the morning.
Another pair that made it through to the semi-finals was Portillo and Zeballos. Another of the surprises of this edition as they overcame the number 2 seeds, Bhosale-Starodubtseva.
Tomorrow, Friday, the quarter-finals of singles draw and semi-finals of doubles will be held. The day will start at 11:00 am.
ORDER OF PLAY Friday 19 July
https://live.itftennis.com/en/live-scores/?tourkey=W-ITF-ESP-2024-024