Martić thus reached the round of 16 in Indian Wells for the second time in her career. The first time she managed to do so was in 2018 when she made it to the quarterfinal when the world’s best tennis player Romanian Simona Halep topped her in three sets.
For a spot in the quarterfinal, the 31-year-old will play against the Russian Ludmilla Samsonova, who defeated Montenegrin Danka Kovinić 6-4, 7-6 (4) in the 3rd round. Their history of joint meetings is on the side of the Croatian tennis player who has celebrated in all three of their previous matches, but Samsonova has advanced in the meantime and reached 32nd in the WTA rankings.
Unlike Samsonova, Martić dropped to 79th place and only managed to win three in Indian Wells, which happened to her for the first time since last year’s WTA 1000 tournament in Rome.
Martić took a 3-1 lead against Raducanu in the first set and lost four games in a row. With a new break, she managed to extend the set to 4-5 and take it to a tie-break. After that, however, the British tennis player was more precise, and after an hour of play, she reached the initial advantage.
Raducanu took a 2-1 lead with a break in the second set. Martić scored three games and lost the serve again. However, with a 5-4 lead, Petra managed to win the third set with a new break.
She opened it with a 2-0 lead but immediately allowed her opponent to come back. Raducanu took a step towards victory when in the ninth game, she took the service away from Martić for the sixth time in the match. But she did not reach the match point. Instead, Martić used the third opportunity to break in the tenth game and then profited from a series of mistakes that the 18-year-old Briton made in the last two games in which she won only two points.
The final statistics showed more errors by Martić (51-41) and more direct points (36-28). However, the decisive factor was that at no time, regardless of the result, did Petra lose her concentration and faith and eventually turned the match around in her favor.
Marin Čilić failed to make it to the third round of Indian Wells. The best Croatian tennis player (24th place) was stopped by Serbian Miomir Kecmanović, the 61st tennis player in the world, after a dramatic finale – 6-7 (7), 6-3, 7-6 (6).
In the decisive tie-break, Marin missed two match points (6-4) and did not reach the point by the end of the match.
He scored a total of 13 aces with a modest first-serve percentage of 48 percent and used just one of 13 break points in the match.
Source: HRT
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