Mirra Andreeva looked like a runaway train in the first set of her third-round match against Viktorija Golubic in Rome on Saturday. In the second set, she was derailed.<\/p>\n
Rome:\u00a0Scores<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Draws<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Order of play<\/a><\/p>\n But the 19-year-old didn’t let that wobble define her day, as she blanked the 33-year-old in the decider to close out a 6-1, 4-6, 6-0 victory in just under two hours and reach the fourth round in Rome for the second straight year. The win is her first over Golubic at the WTA Tour Driven by Mercedes-Benz level and her 28th of the season, tying her with Elena Rybakina for the tour lead.<\/p>\n She’ll now have a chance to beat another opponent for the first time in the Round of 16, where she’ll face No. 21 seed Elise Mertens in what will be their first career meeting. Mertens advanced earlier Saturday with a dramatic three-set win over defending champion and home favorite Jasmine Paolini after saving three match points.<\/p>\n Andreeva’s win over Golubic wasn’t quite that cinematic, but there were plenty of twists and turns throughout, nonetheless. With that being said, here are the three best things I saw in this match:<\/p>\n 1. Andreeva shows why everyone should watch more doubles<\/p>\n The match opened with Andreeva in full command. She broke in the second game, raced to a 3-0 lead, and soon found herself serving for the set at 5-1. All the while, winners were flying off both wings.<\/p>\n But what truly set the tone was her work at the net. The Linz champion won nine of 10 points up close in the first set, producing several applause-inducing moments. After saving two break points while attempting to serve it out, she clipped the line with a backhand to earn set point, then closed out the opener with another confident volley.<\/p>\n More to come…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mirra Andreeva looked like a runaway train in the first set of her third-round match against Viktorija Golubic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14519,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[27,4125],"class_list":{"0":"post-14518","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\/14518","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=14518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14518\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}