Monica Puig couldn’t keep things golden at the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championship Wednesday. The 23 year old Puerto Rican couldn’t deal with the high class tennis of former number one Angelique Kerber who won in straight sets 6-2, 6-3 on Centre Court at Dubai Tennis Stadium. After six tournament appearances, the 29-year-old world number two advanced to her first quarterfinal of the tournament.
This was the fourth time the two met and the first since the gold medal match of the 2016 Rio Olympics where the Puerto Rican won the ladies singles tournament against the top seed. She was ready to pull off an upset and have every chance of doing so against the struggling German who recently lost her world number one rank. Though she managed to take care of Mona Barthel on Tuesday, the challenge of the hard-hitting Puig made it an interesting match once again.
Things started off well with the two getting into a tie through four games. Breaking the stalemate was Kerber who blasted her way to a service hold followed by a streak of three games. She went for the set win in the eighth dealing with a brief deuce before taking a lead in the match after 26 minutes. Despite having three double faults and a low serve percentage the world number two finished the set with a sense of control that would roll into the next set. She landed 11 of 12 on the first serve and 6 of 11 on the second.
Puig opened service in the game where she scored a service hold by two points over Kerber. The German answered with strong hold of her own making the third game critical to either one. It went into a lengthy deuce draw where Kerber came out with the first break of the set that turned much favor her way. She earned a love service in the fourth taking a 3-1 lead on Puig whose second serve had problems landing two of eight so far.
She managed to hold serve in the fourth but Kerber took another step forward who was comfortable on serve while also maintaining the lead. The German looked for the break in the seventh but Puig had a lock on the returns while on serve holding back her opponent to end the game with an angled winner. In an attempt to tie things up on the break, Puig had two game points on Kerber, but unforced errors erased the effort sending things to deuce. Another error on the break killed the opportunity to be leveled having to fight to stay alive in the match.
She served up a good start to the ninth game but opened the door for Kerber to strike back. The number one seed forced deuce before an unforced error put her on match point. It ended after a seven-shot rally with the ball landing long once again for Puig taking her out of the tournament after one hour and five minutes.
“It’s tough to play against Monica,” Kerber said during her on court interview “We played a very good match in Rio and she deserved that one playing an unbelievable match but today I’m really happy about my performance and to be in the next round.” She’ll go on to play Croatian teenager Ana Konjuh in Thursday night’s quarterfinal match. "I know that it will be another tough match," Kerber said. "I think im ready and i will go out there to win and try to enjoy the quarters here."
No comments:
Post a Comment