Garbine Muguruza was an unstoppable force at the Bank of the West Classic Friday afternoon. The 23-year-old took care of business in straight sets on center court defeating Ana Konjuh
6-1, 6-3 at the Taube Family Tennis Stadium on the campus of Stanford University.
The two met for the first time making the quarterfinal important for the Croatian. She was in a similar situation last year at the US Open defeating Agnieszka Radwanska in the round of eight. Playing the Spaniard would no doubt be of an interest to her getting a win but the recent Wimbledon single champion had other ideas. She put a quick end to Kayla Day on Wednesday to get into the quarterfinals with every intention of keeping the heat on anyone she faced.
The number one seed’s presence seemed to rattle the nerves of Konjuh who had unforced errors on her opening serve to hand Muguruza an easy triple break. The world number four delivered the attention necessary to get out of trouble on deuce and win after two breaks. She won the next pair of games that put Konjuh on notice to get in the game or watch the set fly by. The Croatian attacked to make something happen on her serve before taking a conference with coach Goran Prpic to change things up.
Muguruza went back to the offensive reaching 5-1 where she got triple set point before Konjuh responded. She got two points in the seventh game but another unforced error gave Muguruza the ultimate goal after 24 minutes of play. She finished with a 78 percent on first serve points and won three of seven on the break points. Konjuh knew that she needed to regulation the number of errors having nearly a dozen the seven game span.
She attempted to improve to start the second set but her chance for a break was denied by the Spaniard who regrouped to hold her end together. It was her third game in a row against the 29 year old and looked to put ground between her once more. Konjuh stayed with her through the next couple of games but the mistakes were still producing from the fifth seed. She opened the door one more time that pushed Muguruza to take a sizable lead finding herself playing for the match.
Konjuh shut her down in the eighth giving her opportunities to push forward and threaten the Spaniard. The quick pace of the court and shots were helping the Croatian but with Muguruza on serve for it all, the pressure rose significantly. Muguruza reached double match point after an eight shot rally came to a close with the forehand error completing 62 minutes. “I feel good because I stayed composed,” Muguruza said to ESPN’s Brad Gilbert after the match. “Ana’s such a powerful player so I tried to match that and not give a lot of free points.”
In total, Muguruza managed to secure 60 of 95 making her day easy than to be expected. With one quarterfinal out of the way, the top seeded star would prepare for a final’s spot on Saturday when she’ll face the winner between Lesia Tsurkeno and Madison Keys.
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