Marketa Vondrousova caused an upset in the third round of the BNP Paribas Open on Monday with a 3-6, 7-5, 7-6(5) win over No.4 seed Anett Kontaveit.
Vondrousova was down a break at 4-2 in the third set before completing the comeback in two hours and 50 minutes.
Kontaveit dropped serve in the opening game but then turned it around to break Vondrousova twice to lead 4-1, before taking out the first set.
But Vondrousova’s drop shots caused problems for her Estonian opponent and at 6-5 a Kontaveit double fault gave her triple set point. Vondrousova converted to tie the match.
The decider saw five straight breaks before Kontaveit stopped the run to hold for 4-2, but Vondrousova bounced back to make it 4-4 with an array of groundstrokes.
With the match hanging on a tiebreak the Czech, at 2-2, hit three winners in a row to lead 5-2, then a deft drops hit took it to 6-2 lead and four match points, before she converted to take the match.
Vondrousova will next play No.21 seed Veronika Kudermetova in the Round of 16.
No.17 seed Elena Rybakina was another surprise winner, beating No.13 seed Victoria Azarenka 6-3, 6-4.
“It was a tough match, but really happy that I won today,” Rybakina said.
“Today my serve was really, really good. It helped me a lot.”
Greece’s Maria Sakkari made light work Czech Petra Kvitova 6-3, 6-0 in their third round clash, winning all of her first serve points in a one-sided match that lasted just 65 minutes.
“Obviously Petra is a very tough opponent, but I came [onto] the court and I was feeling it today,” Sakkari said.
“I think it was a very good day for me and like not a good day for her. I was just tactically playing the right way and serving really good, so I think that was the reason why I won that match quite easily.
“There are games that I might not serve that well. There will be a couple of games in a set that I won’t be acing every point or I won’t be making that many first serves, so then I just trust my game from the baseline that I can just out-grind the opponent.
“It’s just that I have a Plan A and a Plan B, which I think is good and that’s what got me to the top.”
