{"id":125802,"date":"2025-05-23T17:19:07","date_gmt":"2025-05-23T17:19:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/125802\/"},"modified":"2025-05-23T17:19:07","modified_gmt":"2025-05-23T17:19:07","slug":"saville-battles-past-townsend-mboko-valentova-qualify-for-roland-garros","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/125802\/","title":{"rendered":"Saville battles past Townsend; Mboko, Valentova qualify for Roland Garros"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Five players had already booked their places in the Roland Garros main draw on Day 4 of qualifying: Nina Stojanovic, Nao Hibino, Tamara Korpatsch, Oksana Selekhmeteva and Carole Monnet.<\/p>\n<p>On Friday, the 11 remaining qualifiers were decided.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Two tour-level stalwarts opened the day with a quintessential qualifying battle that pitted Daria Saville&#8217;s defensive grit against Taylor Townsend&#8217;s net-rushing aggression. Former No. 20 Saville held off No. 6 seed Townsend in the end, advancing 2-6, 6-2, 6-4 in 2 hours and 39 minutes. Saville will contest her 35th Grand Slam main draw, having made her debut at the 2013 Australian Open &#8212; the last time she successfully navigated the qualifying rounds. Townsend will nonetheless also compete in the main draw as a lucky loser following Belinda Bencic&#8217;s withdrawal.<\/li>\n<li>No. 193-ranked Sara Bejlek dismissed No. 1 seed Yuliia Starodubtseva 6-0, 6-4 to score her eighth career Top 100 win, and first of 2025 &#8212; and ending the Ukrainian&#8217;s 14-match winning streak in Grand Slam qualifying. At the age of 19, Bejlek has already qualified at six different majors, including twice at Roland Garros &#8212; but the Czech teenager is yet to win a main-draw match.<\/li>\n<li>On a good day for Argentina, No. 9 seed Solana Sierra improved her season record to 27-9 with a 6-3, 6-2 defeat of No. 29 seed Wang Xiyu. The 20-year-old, who won her first WTA 125 title in Antalya this spring, did not drop a set in qualifying for her second major (following last year&#8217;s US Open).<\/li>\n<li>Argentinian No. 1 Sierra was joined by the country&#8217;s No. 2, Maria Lourdes Carle, and No. 4, Julia Riera, both former Top 100 players. Carle raced past Lithuania&#8217;s Justina Mikulskyte 6-0, 6-1 in 71 minutes, and Riera eased past Romania&#8217;s Miriam Bulgaru 6-4, 6-1 in 68 minutes.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Four of the first nine completed matches saw a player make it to her first Grand Slam main draw. Victoria Mboko, the Canadian 18-year-old who has been near-unbeatable on the ITF World Tennis Tour this year, improved her season record to 40-5 by defeating Kaja Juvan 7-5, 6-3. Mboko, who has also taken both Paula Badosa and Coco Gauff to three sets this year, did not drop a set in the first Grand Slam qualifying campaign of her young career.<\/li>\n<li>Last year&#8217;s junior champion, Tereza Valentova, also made it through her first Grand Slam qualifying competition without dropping a set. The Czech 18-year-old defeated Simona Waltert 6-2, 6-4, and her season record is now 23-6, including two ITF W75 titles.<\/li>\n<li>No. 230-ranked Anastasiia Sobolieva came through a rollercoaster 6-0, 0-6, 6-2 contest over No. 22 seed Francesca Jones. The 20-year-old Ukrainian, who had not won a Grand Slam qualifying match in three previous attempts, recovered after winning just eight points in the second set.<\/li>\n<li>Former Top 20 junior Joanna Garland was sidelined due to injury for much of 2024, but has put together a spectacular comeback, winning nine ITF titles in the past eight months. Now ranked No. 177, the 23-year-old Chinese Taipei player brought that form into her first Grand Slam qualifying event since 2023, coming through 6-4, 7-5 against Anna-Lena Friedsam to complete a campaign in which she did not drop a set.<\/li>\n<li>Spain&#8217;s Leyre Romero Gormaz, a two-time WTA 125 finalist in Antalya this spring, won a match between two players both bidding for their first Grand Slam main draw. The 22-year-old defeated Poland&#8217;s Linda Klimovicova 6-4, 6-4.<\/li>\n<li>The final qualifier was Italy&#8217;s Lucrezia Stefanini, who plays with two-handed strokes on both sides. The 27-year-old defeated Veronika Erjavec 6-3, 6-2 to qualify for the third Grand Slam main draw of her career, first since Wimbledon 2023 and first at Roland Garros.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>2025 Roland Garros qualifier and lucky loser placements<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>[Q] Lucrezia Stefanini vs. Jil Teichmann<br \/>[Q] Nina Stojanovic vs. [16] Amanda Anisimova<br \/>[11] Diana Shnaider vs. [Q] Anastasiia Sobolieva<br \/>[Q] Leyre Romero Gormaz vs. [WC] Tiantsoa Rakotomanga Rajaonah<br \/>[Q] Victoria Mboko vs. Lulu Sun<br \/>[Q] Tamara Korpatsch vs. [SR] Sorana Cirstea<br \/>[12] Elena Rybakina vs. [Q] Julia Riera<br \/>[16] Marta Kostyuk vs. [Q] Sara Bejlek<br \/>Katie Volynets vs. [Q] Joanna Garland<br \/>[Q] Solana Sierra vs. [32] Yulia Putintseva<br \/>[Q] Oksana Selekhmeteva vs. Marketa Vondrousova<br \/>[Q] Maria Lourdes Carle vs. Ann Li<br \/>[7] Madison Keys vs. [Q] Daria Saville<br \/>[Q] Carole Monnet vs. Katie Boulter<br \/>[Q] Nao Hibino vs. Moyuka Uchijima<br \/>[LL] Taylor Townsend vs. Elisabetta Cocciaretto<br \/>[WC] Chloe Paquet vs. [Q] Tereza Valentova<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Five players had already booked their places in the Roland Garros main draw on Day 4 of qualifying:&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":125803,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4105],"tags":[79,1068,661,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-125802","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-tennis","10":"tag-text","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114558295258671328","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125802"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125802\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}