Top two safely make it through to main draw

Dubai — Eight qualifiers and three lucky losers made it through to the main draw of the WTA event at the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships on Saturday.

Canada’s Gabriela Dabrowski during her match against Germany’s Julia Goerges. — KT photo by Dhes Handumon

The Australian top seed Jarmila Gajdosova’s reward for a routine 6-2, 6-2 victory over Japan’s Misa Eguchi is a first-round match against Garbine Muguruza, of Spain.

Croatia’s Mirjana Lucic-Baroni, who was ranked second for this initial tournament, also progressed at the expense of 12th seeded Romanian Alexandra Dulgheru 5-7, 6-2, 6-2. Lucic-Baroni will now face former US Open champion Samantha Stosur in the first round proper.

Julia Goerges and Elena Vesnina lost keenly-contested matches to Canada’s Gabriela Dabrowki (6-4, 3-6, 6-3) and Kateryna Kozlova (7-6 (5), 6-4), of Ukraine, respectively.

However, they — along with Czech Katerina Siniakova — received late reprieves as lucky losers following the withdrawals of Serena Williams, Eugenie Bouchard and Dominika Cibulkova.

Siniakova has been pitted against Australian wild card Casey Dellacqua first up, whereas Goerges and Vesnina will meet seeded opposition in the form of Flavia Pennetta (Italy, 10 WC) and Shuai Peng (China, 16).

Dabrowksi and Kozlova have been inserted in the draw opposite Turkish wild card Cagla Buyukakcay and Great Britain’s Heather Watson, while Siniakova’s conqueror Timea Babos will challenge the Serbian 12th seed Jelena Jankovic.

China’s Qiang Wang came through a tough three-set battle 6-1, 4-6, 6-2 against Russia’s Evgeniya Rodina, who had earlier beaten Omani wildcard Fatma Al Nabhani 6-3, 6-1. Wang shall subsequently encounter Kurumi Nara, of Japan, in all-Asian affair.

In the qualifier between the two Rodionova sisters, a trailing Anastasia retired at the start of the second set with the score at 2-6, 1-0 to allow her younger sibling Arina to make it through to a day-one clash against France’s Caroline Garcia.

In the only other match between the two Rodionova sisters in Las Vegas three years ago, Arina retired in their round of 16 encounter with Anastasia leading 5-2 in the first set.

The eighth and final qualifier, Ukrainian Yuliya Beygelzimer, and Russia’s Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova were awaiting the results from the Antwerp semi-finals on Saturday before their first-round opponents could ultimately be determined.

With the four players (Carla Suarez Navarro, Andrea Petkovic, Karolina Pliskova and Barbora Zahlavova Strycova) contesting those two semis in Belgium also scheduled to compete here this week, tournament organisers have provisionally put two ‘performance byes’ alongside the names of that quartet.

Beygelzimer and Pavlyuchenkova will face the losing semi-finalists in the first round, but the Antwerp finalists will automatically take their places in the next phase in due course.

alex@khaleejtimes.com