World number two Elena Rybakina survived a huge scare to battle into the Canadian Open quarter-finals on Sunday in Toronto while fourth-ranked Coco Gauff cruised through.<\/p>\n
Kazakhstan\u2019s Rybakina recovered from 0-3 and two breaks down in the final set to beat Liudmila Samsonova 6-4, 4-6, 6-4 before American Gauff swept aside Russian teenage qualifier Alina Korneeva, 6-3, 6-1.<\/p>\n
Rybakina will face four-time Grand Slam champion Naomi Osaka, who eliminated home hero Leylah Fernandez 6-4, 6-4.<\/p>\n
Gauff reached the last eight in Canada for the first time since 2023 and next meets 14th-ranked Swiss Belinda Bencic, who won 6-4, 6-0 in 73 minutes over 20th-ranked Alexandra Eala, a Filipina who won her first WTA title last Monday in Washington.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy main focus today was let me try and close it out,\u201d said Gauff, who has not dropped a set in Canada.<\/p>\n
\u201cProbably not the way I should be thinking but it worked today.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m proud of how the last three matches have gone and just knowing if I have to go the distance I\u2019m ready, but obviously would prefer to cut it short if I can.\u201d<\/p>\n
Osaka broke in the seventh game of each set to advance in 82 minutes.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was all pretty good for me,\u201d the 13th-ranked Osaka said. \u201cShe has a great attitude. She\u2019s consistent and she will fight. She\u2019s kind of like a bulldog.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Japanese star, who has never faced Rybakina, said sound groundstrokes were key.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I feel comfortable or at least confident in myself knowing I can run things down, I loosen up a lot,\u201d Osaka said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was catching my service toss a couple times. Hopefully in the next match I don\u2019t do that as often.<\/p>\n
\u201cI need to be confident in myself, execute what I can and at the end of the day just try my best and whatever happens happens.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bencic connected on 64.4% of her first serves and won 72.4% of those points in a 73-minute victory, her 10th win in a row over left-handed opponents.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hate to play against lefties so I\u2019m surprised by this statistic,\u201d Bencic said. \u201cVery tricky.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe helped me I played a lefty the round before against Taylor Townsend. I got used to the serve a little bit. I wish I was a lefty too.\u201d – AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"World number two Elena Rybakina survived a huge scare to battle into the Canadian Open quarter-finals on Sunday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":71738,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[43724,9771,46144,8065,8064,25584,8,8903,4469,85,25575,9180,46147,46145,46146,9948],"class_list":["post-71737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-osaka","tag-alexandra-eala","tag-belinda-bencic","tag-canadian-open-2024","tag-coco-gauff","tag-elena-rybakina","tag-grand-slam-champions","tag-japan","tag-leylah-fernandez","tag-naomi-osaka","tag-osaka","tag-tennis-highlights","tag-tennis-news","tag-toronto-sports","tag-toronto-tennis-quarter-finals","tag-womens-tennis-results","tag-wta-tour"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71737"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71737\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}