Elina Svitolina used her experience to get herself out a jam at the Miami Open. After losing the opening set, the world number four had her focus recalibrated and ran away in the last two beating down Daria Gavrilova 4-6, 6-0, 6-1 on Court One at Crandon Park Tennis Center. The win gave the Ukrainian further ground to build on to advance to the fourth round.
The two last met at Indian Wells where the Ukrainian took the series lead with a straight sets win last season. With only the world number three left ahead of her in the tournament, Svitolina had her chances increased to pick up a number of points and achieve the best ranking of her career to date. The object would be to handle her former doubles partner and keep the winning streak against Gavrilova that stands at three. The Australian gained a pass of the opening round and proved her worth taking down Andrea Petkovic. With both hoping to get beyond the halfway point, it would be up to her to get out front of the third seed and create havoc for the 23 year old.
She started by breaking Svitolina before watching a break opportunity came the Ukrainian’s way. She followed it up with her first service hold on Gavrilova getting the controlled offense into motion. Gavrilova got her first as well making it a challenge for Svitolina as she ran around the court to return on the Australian’s second serve. Through four games, the players remained on serve with Svitolina on point setting the pace for them. It came to an end for the world number four as Gavrilova broke her. It led Andrew Bettles to come out seeing that Svitolina was slightly discouraged after that loss. Bettles tried to keep her composed asking her to fight on every point and get more width on her shots.
While she came out slow with the strategy, it led the players to deuce with Svitolina destined to strike back with a break in the eighth game. The boost of confidence gave her energy to attack Gavrilova but saw her second serve being targeted by the 24-year-old. It was a strategy that worked well to gain the lead and pressure the Ukrainian to continue faltering. It led to her carrying all the successes in the next two games to complete the set in 45 minutes.
Svitolina knew what had to be done in the next set and used her focus to make it her set to win. She controlled all aspects of her game to blast away at Gavrilova gaining a 3-0 lead in the process. Her dominance produced a double break making it very likely to take the match to a third set. Svitolina added a fifth straight taking Gavrilova out with her first love service of the match.
The Ukrainian hunted for the bagel but Gavrilova’s force of deuce made it difficult for a moment. After the break, it was a simple lob to end the rally that gave the fourth seed the shutout of the second set that took her 26 minutes to achieve. Svitolina committed one error in the set while Gavrilova had over two dozen with a low first serve percentage.
While she continued to struggle in the third set, the world number four had found her niche by extending her winning streak. Though the first two games were hard, the Ukrainian’s objective proved the strongest of her tournament gaining a nine game winning streak. Svitolina’s dominance took a toll on Gavrilova who let her coach know it during the break. Despite her low self-esteem her coach tried to keep her spirits up telling her not to lose hope. She etched out a win for herself in the fourth but Svitolina was all over her serve in the fifth hitting the ball deep where Gavrilova had little chance of fighting back in the rally. She took a 4-1 lead battling the Aussie on each point coming out by a hair. With two left, Bettles came out to keep Svitolina together with the goal within reach.
She added another break in the sixth winning 11 of the last dozen games with the match in her hands serving the seventh. Defense was all the Australian had to stay competitive and with Svitolina adding some free points it helped temporarily. The Ukrainian got tactical moving toward the net looking for every point to reach match point. She got it on a sliced ace that accounted for her only of the entire match dispatching Gavrilova in two hours and six minutes.
With the comeback that continued her best run in the tournament, the 23-year-old had her eyes set on the fourth round facing Ashleigh Barty on Tuesday.
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