(Image: Tennis World USA)
The first two quarter-finals took place at the Italian Open on Tuesday featuring the bottom half of the women’s draw. Veronika Kudermetova and Anhelina Kalinina prevailed to make it to the penultimate stage of the tournament, with their results emerging to be somewhat similar.
In the first quarter-final, Kudermetova, the 11th seed came from down a set to defeat 22nd seed Qinwen Zheng. Kudermetova won 3-6, 6-3, 6-4 after two hours and 31 minutes of play. Both players finished the match with a couple of shared stats, winning 72% of their first-serve points and saving three break points each.
However, across each of the three sets, there was a definite swing in the momentum from Zheng’s end to Kudermetova’s. In the first set, Zheng won 85% of her first-serve points to Kudermetova’s 68%. In the second set, Zheng’s first-serve points won dropped to 50% while Kudermetova won 64% of her first-serve points.
In the decider, the eventual winner finished with 82% of first-serve points won to her opponent’s 68%. This is the second consecutive WTA 1000 semi-final the 26-year-old’s reached in her career. Prior to this result, Kudermetova had made it to the…
