BERLIN, 21 Jun: Wimbledon champion Elena Rybakina\u2019s preparations for the grass-court Grand Slam hit a snag Wednesday when she lost to Donna Vekic 6-7 (1), 6-3, 6-4 in the second round of the Berlin Open.
\nVekic faced only two break points and saved them both. It was Rybakina\u2019s second match, after beating qualifier Polina Kudermetova on Tuesday, since withdra-wing ahead of her third-round match at the French Open when a virus left her with breathing difficulties.
\n\u201cI stayed in the moment. I was just trying to play the next point, the next game,\u201d Vekic said. \u201cI was like \u2018Just stay with her. The chances will come.\u2019\u201d
\nVekic\u2019s next opponent will be Elina Avanesyan, who lost in qualifying but then got a main-draw spot as a lucky after another player withdrew.
\nCaroline Garcia beat qualifier Jaimee Fourlis 6-3, 6-2 and will next play former Wimbledon champion Petra Kvitova.
\n\u201cThe best practice is to play matches so obviously I feel more confident in my movement,\u201d the third-seeded Garcia said of adapting to grass after clay tournaments. \u201cToday, I had a good time on Center Court. I really enjoyed it.\u201d
\nKvitova eased to a 6-1, 6-1 win over Nadia Podoroska in their second-round match which lasted 49 minutes.
\nMaria Sakkari beat Aliz\u00e9 Cornet 6-4, 6-2 in the first round after a health issue affected her French oppo-nent. Cornet was trailing 4-1 in the first set when she complained of feeling unwell and had her blood pressure checked before continuing.
\nSakkari will next face Aliaksandra Sasnovich, who upset Victoria Azarenka 6-4, 6-4 in a match that had been suspended overnight. (AP)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BERLIN, 21 Jun: Wimbledon champion Elena Rybakina\u2019s preparations for the grass-court Grand Slam hit a snag Wednesday when she lost to Donna Vekic 6-7 (1), 6-3, 6-4 in the second round of the Berlin Open. Vekic faced only two break points and saved them both. It was Rybakina\u2019s second match, after beating qualifier Polina Kudermetova […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-218878","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218878"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218878\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}