Ostapenko beats Fernandez in three sets to reach Wuhan Open quarterfinals

Latvian tennis player Jelena Ostapenko reached the quarterfinals of the Wuhan Open, a WTA 1000 event in China, on Thursday. WTA 1000 is the top tier of the women's professional tennis tour below the Grand Slams, and Wuhan is the final tournament of that level this season. In the last 16, Ostapenko, ranked 34th, beat 25th-ranked Canadian Leylah Fernandez 6-1, 1-6, 6-4.

She earned 215 ranking points for reaching the quarterfinals, which should provisionally move her back into the top 30 next week.

How the match unfolded

In the first set Ostapenko broke her opponent's serve three times and won 6-1. In the second, Fernandez recovered after losing the opening game, winning six games in a row and converting three of her four break points to level the match.

In the decider, Ostapenko went 40-0 up on the Canadian's serve but missed all three break points at first. In the fifth game, at 2-2, she failed to convert six break points before taking the seventh to lead 3-2, and she then went 4-2 ahead. Fernandez levelled the score, but in the ninth game Ostapenko again led 40-0 on her opponent's serve and broke on the third attempt to go 5-4 up. In the final game she lost the first point on her own serve, then won four in a row to close out the victory.

The road to the last eight

In the first round Ostapenko beat qualifier Daria Kasatkina of Australia (ranked 82nd) 6-1, 6-1. In the second round she defeated the American Jessica Pegula, the second seed and world number four, 2-6, 7-6 (9:7), 6-3. The two players had previously met at Wimbledon in 2021, in the first round, where Ostapenko won 6-1, 6-2.

In the quarterfinals she will face either world number seven Karolina Muchova of the Czech Republic or Russia's Diana Shnaider (ranked 13th). This is Ostapenko's fifth appearance in Wuhan. She reached the semifinals in 2017 but lost in the first round last year. The tournament is played on hard courts.