Jelena Ostapenko found her grip just in time to dominate at the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix Thursday afternoon. With a tough start against Zarina Diyas of Kazakhstan, the world number five ran away in the second set to win in straight sets 6-3, 6-0 on Centre Court at the Porsche Arena in Stuttgart.
The two met back in 2016 where the Latvian quickly dispatched the Kazak allowing four game winners in her straight sets win at Doha. She received a pass from the first round while Diyas managed to put together a strong win over Carina Witthoeft Wednesday. While the challenge looked high, the world number 52 would try to pick up her first top ten upset this season.
Ostapenko opened the match with a couple errors that gave Diyas the break in the first. The 21-year-old recovered pulling off a break to love in the second. The two got on track holding serve against one another through four games as the competition remained firm. Ostapenko continued to lead during each pair of service games but Diyas found her groove to stick with the world number five. It was becoming a strong showing from the Kazak who normally found herself trailing after seven games but instead sat a game down.
A mistake on Diyas second serve in the eighth gave Ostapenko enough room to break out into her first gap of the set. She wasted no time bringing an end to the set where she served to capture the win in Game nine against Diyas completing 34 minutes. Ostapenko showed a lot of firepower landing 13 winners despite the low serve percentage. She won 72 percent of points on the first serve and three of four breaks against Diyas who struggled on the second serve landing three of ten.
She made up for the late downfall coming out tough to serve the second set where Ostapenko forced deuce. It was a game that stretched out to six breaks and 18 points in which the Latvian’s second serve struggled to remain consistent. She managed to bring it all together improving her ground stokes that closed out the eight-minute fight to complete the break. The fourth seed brushed things off to get into a dominant mode that broke Diyas open to bring problems with her movement and second serve. It was soon a 3-0 lead for Ostapenko which sent out Roberto Antonini to speak with the Kazak.
His words of what actually was wrong followed that she could still pull it together, but the 21-year-old had other plans. She put together another strong performance to make it 4-0 runaway inching closer to a match win. Diyas battled hard on her serve in the fifth but a push to deuce by the fourth seed only resulted in a fifth straight win. All that remained was the final piece to pull the bagel out and Ostapenko delivered with a shutout of Diyas that ended the match in 63 minutes. She ended the day with 22 winners and contained unforced errors to move into the round of eight.
“First matches are always tough but today I was playing good for the first round especially,” Ostapenko said during her on court interview. “I’m feeling great to be back on clay.” She’ll await the winner between fifth seed Karolina Pliskova and qualifier Veronika Kudermetova on Friday.
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