Defending champion and top seed Jessica Pegula fought back to reach the WTA Charleston Open quarter-finals on Thursday, requiring a final-set tiebreak to see off Italy’s Elisabetta Cocciaretto 1-6, 6-1, 7-6 (7\/1).<\/p>\n
A resilient Pegula, the world number five from the United States, eventually progressed just a day after laboring more than three hours to beat 72nd-ranked Yulia Putintseva of Kazakhstan.<\/p>\n
The latest hard-fought win, clocking in at just over two hours, was revenge for Pegula, who was stunned by Cocciaretto at Wimbledon last year.<\/p>\n
Cocciaretto, ranked 43rd in the world, dominated the first set.<\/p>\n
Pegula’s serve was notably wayward, with the American winning just 25 percent of first serve points.<\/p>\n
“I don’t know what I was doing out there… Oh my gosh, that’s horrible,” said Pegula after.<\/p>\n
Pegula rallied in the second set, but was immediately broken in a topsy-turvy final set, in which she trailed 1-4.<\/p>\n
The American hauled it back to 4-4, but then found the net on a break point that would have given her the lead.<\/p>\n
Two points from defeat at 4-5, Pegula fought back to 5-5 and they advanced into a deciding tiebreak.<\/p>\n
Pegula drew first blood, going up 1-0 off Cocciaretto’s serve, then won every point on her own serve before Cocciaretto double-faulted to hand her the match.<\/p>\n
“She beat me the last time we played, so there was a bit of a mental thing too, but I was able to serve really well, I think, at the end,” Pegula said. “And then I just held my nerve.”<\/p>\n
Pegula, who won the title in Dubai in February, next faces Russia’s Diana Shnaider — a 6-3, 6-0 winner over Canadian Leylah Fernandez.<\/p>\n
Swiss third seed Belinda Bencic also advanced, shrugging off a slow start to beat Czech Sara Bejlek 7-6 (7\/4), 6-2 and line up a quarter-final clash with fifth-seeded American Madison Keys.<\/p>\n
Keys beat Hungarian Anna Bondar 6-2, 7-5. AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Defending champion and top seed Jessica Pegula fought back to reach the WTA Charleston Open quarter-finals on Thursday, requiring a final-set tiebreak to see off Italy’s Elisabetta Cocciaretto 1-6, 6-1, 7-6 (7\/1). A resilient Pegula, the world number five from the United States, eventually progressed just a day after laboring more than three hours to …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3561,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3559"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3559\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3562,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3559\/revisions\/3562"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}