No. 5 seed Jessica Pegula fought off three match points in the second-set tiebreak in Monday’s 3-6, 7-6 (9), 6-0 win against No. 30 Emma Raducanu of Great Britain at the China Open in Beijing.
Trailing 6-5 and 8-7, Pegula saved the first two match points with backhand winners down the line. Down 9-8, she saved the third when Raducanu’s forehand sailed long.
“That was a crazy match,” Pegula said in her on-court interview. “That was really intense. But I got myself back into the tiebreak and just wanted keep pressure on. When she hit the double fault (leading 5-4), I knew I was still playing some good tennis. It was right there, it was really, really close. And to be honest, I think I got a little lucky on those two backhand winners (both down match point). But I just tried to keep fighting for as long as I could.”
Pegula sailed through the third set to win the 2-hour, 23-minute thriller and will take on No. 23 seed Marta Kostyuk of Ukraine in the fourth round of the WTA 1000 tournament.
Pegula is 3-1 head-to-head against Kostyuk, who eliminated Russian qualifier Aliaksandra Sasnovich 6-4, 6-2 in the third round.
No. 1 seed Iga Swiatek of Poland was leading 6-0 when Colombia’s Camila Osorio had to retire with an abdominal injury. The opening set — Swiatek’s 17th bagel of 2025 — was closer than it appeared, with five of six games going to deuce.
After Osorio double faulted to fall behind 40-0 in the first game of the second set, she was forced to call it quits.
“For sure I’m sorry for Camila, because she’s always giving her 100 percent,” said Swiatek, the 2023 Beijing champ. “She told me she got injured at the beginning of the match. It’s always pretty sad to see that because we want to just compete. She wasn’t able to. But overall, like besides that, I feel like I played good in the first set and really used my game to push Camila.”
Swiatek will face No. 16 seed Emma Navarro, who also reached the fourth round via her opponent’s retirement. Navarro was leading 6-2, 1-0 when France’s Lois Boisson dropped out with an injured left thigh.
No. 26 Linda Noskova of the Czech Republic was ahead 6-4, 3-6, 3-0 when seventh-seeded home hopeful Qinwen Zheng retired due to trouble with her surgically repaired right elbow.
In other third-round action, fourth-seeded Russian Mirra Andreeva ousted Spain’s Jessica Bouzas Maneiro 6-4, 6-1; Russia’s Anastasia Potapova defeated Turkey’s Zeynep Sonmez, 6-3, 7-5; and England’s Sonay Kartal beat Australia’s Maya Joint 6-3, 6-2.
–Field Level Media
