By Chris Oddo |Thursday October 13, 2016
The race to lock up the last Singapore slot is tight in Linz, as three players all pushed their hopes along on Thursday.
Photo Source: ITF
The Road to Singapore is experiencing a bit of a traffic jam in Linz, Austria. Madison Keys, Garbiñe Muguruza and Dominika Cibulkova all have kicked into overdrive to reach the quarterfinals and increase their chance of qualifying for one of the last three WTA Finals spots in Singapore.
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Keys rolled past Misaki Doi, 6-2, 6-0 in just 47 minutes behind 21 of 22 first-serve points won. The American locked down her 45th win of the season and sets up a quarterfinal clash with French qualifier Oceane Dodin. Keys is currently in seventh in the RTS standings.
Muguruza only dropped two games as well. The Spaniard, in sixth in the RTS standings, hammered Monica Niculescu, 6-1, 6-1 to set up a quarterfinal with Switzerland’s Viktorija Golubic.
Cibulkova started the week ten points out of qualification for Singapore but the Slovakian is one match from levelling up with Jo Konta on the RTS leaderboard after a 6-1, 6-3 win over Germany’s Annika Beck.
By reaching the semifinal Cibulkova would draw even with Konta and she could move ahead with a victory over defending champion Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova on Friday.
Konta was slated to meet China’s Wang Qiang in second-round action at Hong Kong, but the British No.1 pulled out due to injury.
Carla Suárez Navarro is also clinging to slim qualification hopes at Linz. The Spaniard will face Denisa Allertova in quarterfinal action on Friday. Svetlana Kuznetsova is in a similar situation. The Russian will face Naomi Osaka in the Tianjin quarterfinals on Friday.