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Naomi Broady and Jelena Ostapenko battled for nearly two and a half hours in Auckland on Wednesday, and each player ran the emotional gamut as the seesaw match ebbed and flowed, then got heated and weird. Did we say weird? We mean’t very weird.

Broady, a qualifier, fresh off her first top-10 win last night when she defeated Ana Ivanovic, had saved a match point to reach a second-set tiebreaker. Ostapenko, a former Wimbledon junior singles champion and current world No. 84 at the age of 18, was feeling a bit frustrated when she tossed her racquet to the back wall after dropping a point in the breaker (see video above).

Initially overlooked by the umpire, Broady wouldn’t let the incident go and pressed the official to penalize the Latvian. Eventually the supervisor came to the court and ensured that Ostapenko was given a code violation but Broady wanted more. She wanted Ostapenko disqualified.

Things would boil over (or at least we thought), tennis became the focus again, and Broady took the second-set tiebreaker before falling behind 5-1 in the third set. But the best drama had yet to unfold. Nearly out of it, Broady somehow rallied, saving a second match point and notching the final six games to reach her first career quarterfinal. She ripped an obscene forehand winner to seal the deal and burst into defiant celebration (also note: she fired 21 aces in this match) before heading to the net for a handshake. The rest, as they say, is history (see video below).




Broady will face American Sloane Stephens next.




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