Jelena Ostapenko had an uphill battle before coming out the winner at the Miami Open Friday evening. What started as a quick first set stalled in the opening of the second before a 6-4, 6-4 score for the Latvian over Timea Babos came to fruition on Court One at Crandon Park Tennis Center.
The two haven’t competed against one another in two years with the series even at one apiece. Babos was already into the draw where she pulled off a straight sets win over Mona Barthel on Tuesday. While it matched her best appearance in the tournament, the mission would be to pull off an upset against the world number five. Ostapenko saw her run at Indian Wells get cut short but in just her second year in the main draw, it left plenty of room for improvement and a shot at making good with the first half of the hard-court season nearly complete.
Babos opened scoring with a service hold that held between the two players through five games. The change arrived in the sixth as the young Latvian broke the Hungarian to take the lead but fell to a break herself by Babos. During the break, Thomas Drouet came out asking for her to bring more intensity to the set and make every point count. She did so back on serve to level the score through eight making every game count to determine the leader.
Prior to the ninth, Ostapenko took a conference with her coach who showed her the places that Babos wasn’t playing in and to focus on those. She stepped up first with a solid hold of Babos putting the strategy to use before hunting down the set win. Forcing the Hungarian to play deep played off for her as she capped the final break of the first to end 34 minutes of play. Despite serving 42 percent on serve, her ability to land a number of shots on both sides was positive while Babos struggled on the second serve.
When the second got underway, the struggles switched to the 21-year-old who double faulted three times in the opening game. Despite all those problems and five blown break point chances by Babos, Ostapenko somehow locked down the win to lead. A sense of frustration was on the face of the 24-year-old who clearly had a lot going on with her second serve more than the first. She battled the issues that extended the second game to deuce. By the time all the breaks had surpassed, Babos found a way to hold that ended things after 17 minutes.
It seemed like a pattern of lengthening circumstances fell upon the court as the players took the third to deuce battling to get a winner out of it. Nearly 40 points were played in the game until the Latvian held serve. During the break both players were very much on a frustrated level of their games with Babos losing her emotions while her coach asked her to make her shots painful. David Taylor suggested to Ostapenko that if the balls felt dead to hit lower on the racket and bring together some energy.
The pace began to quicken as five games elapsed with the 21-year-old still in the running despite fans coming into the stands during points. Through six games, the players remained on serve tied at three games all. The biggest change of the set came in the seventh when Babos successfully pulled off the break to gain the lead over Ostapenko leaving the door open for a possible third set. It was slammed close by the fifth seed as she gained the AD break point to level the score at four all.
With the match back in her hands, the pressure was very much on the shoulders of Babos to get tie the set once more and dig in. Ostapenko didn’t want that to happen as she played with plenty of strength left to gain two match points for the win that took 1 hour and 35 minutes to finish.
With an unusual turn of events occurring on court, Ostapenko would hope for a better forecast in the third round facing Brazil’s Beatriz Haddad Maia on Sunday.
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