Three top players on the WTA Tour Driven by Mercedes-Benz were given all they could handle by inspired unseeded opposition on Friday at the Internazionali BNL d’Italia — and while Madison Keys and Naomi Osaka each found a way through in three sets, Karolina Muchova wasn’t so lucky.<\/p>\n
Rome:\u00a0Scores<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Draws<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Order of play<\/a><\/p>\n Fresh off a semifinal run at the Mutua Madrid Open as a lucky loser — where she upset Elena Rybakina along the way — Anastasia Potapova continued her good form with a 6-3, 6-2 upset of No. 11 seed Muchova. Meanwhile, Keys rallied from a set and a break down against compatriot Peyton Stearns to win 4-6, 6-4, 6-2 while Osaka regrouped after losing a set and a break lead against Eva Lys in her 6-4, 4-6, 6-3 triumph.<\/p>\n Here’s how it all went down.<\/p>\n Whether lucky loser or qualifier, Potapova stays hot<\/p>\n After losing in the last round of qualifying, Potapova only found her way into the Madrid draw less than an hour after her first-round match as Keys withdrew from that event with illness.\u00a0<\/p>\n In Rome, her run has been characterized not by second chances, but by great escapes.<\/p>\n In the last round of qualifying and the first round of the main draw, she trailed by a set only to turn things around — and she never trailed against Doha champion Muchova. A six-game swing to Potapova’s side of the scoreboard — from 4-3 to 6-3, 4-0 — helped, as did saving seven of eight break points.<\/p>\n The Austrian has now won 10 of her last 12 matches, and will next face No. 20 seed Liudmila Samsonova. Samsonova, who entered Rome just 3-7 in her last 10 matches and also saw her Madrid effort cut short with illness, was a 6-4, 6-3 winner over American Ann Li.<\/p>\n Keys gets Roman revenge against her fellow American<\/p>\n Stearns entered her third career match against Keys with a 2-0 head-to-head edge — a mark which included a three-set win over Keys, then seeded No. 5, in this same round of the Internazionali BNL d’Italia last year.\u00a0<\/p>\n In the match, Keys won the first set with ease before Stearns rallied and edged victory in a third-set tiebreak. In the reprise, it was 2025 Australian Open champion who wrestled victory from behind.<\/p>\n Keys won 10 of the last 12 games from 6-4, 4-2 down against Stearns — a stretch that included six in a row to stamp a 3-0 lead in the decider. While Stearns was up for the fight, and won back-to-back games to get the final set back on serve, Keys connected on enough big serves and powerful returns to steer herself over the line. She won nearly three-quarters of her service points in the final set, and also broke Stearns three times in five opportunities.<\/p>\n More to come…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Three top players on the WTA Tour Driven by Mercedes-Benz were given all they could handle by inspired…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14208,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[27,4125],"class_list":{"0":"post-14207","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rome","8":"tag-rome","9":"tag-text"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14207\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}