Having recently lost her No.1 WTA ranking, Iga Swiatek‘s troubles continue as she fell to Veronika Kudermetova for the first time in their five career meetings. The top-seeded Pole suffered a 6-2 2-6 6-4 loss in the quarterfinals of the Toray Pan Pacific Open Tennis to a player against whom she had won all eight previous sets, giving away a total of just four games in their previous three encounters.
The first set of Friday’s quarterfinal was especially disastrous for Swiatek, who hit just three winners and made 20 unforced errors. In the second set she claimed eight out of the initial nine points and earned her first break of the match. She then kept that lead and secured another break to force a decisive third set.
In the four-deuce third game of the final set, Kudermetova pushed through and protected her service games to close out the win on her first match point.
In Saturday’s semifinals, the eighth-seeded Kudermetova will face fellow Russian Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, who beat Ekaterina Alexandrova 6-2 7-5 in the quarterfinals of the Toray Pan Pacific Open Tennis.
