By Chris Oddo | @TheFanChild | Thursday April 21, 2022
By Chris Oddo | @TheFanChild | Thursday April 21, 2022
Emma Raducanu slid past Germany’s Tamara Korpatch, 6-0, 2-6, 6-1, on Thursday to set a date with Poland’s Iga Swiatek in the quarterfinals.
Raducanu, who is playing her first WTA-level event on clay, is enjoying playing on the clay, and she believes it can be her best surface at some point in her career, so what could be better than a test against the 2020 Roland-Garros champion, a player who just so happens to be riding a 20-match winning streak?
"Of course [Iga is] in great form, so it's going to take a very high level from me to make it competitive," Raducanu said on Thursday. "I'm looking forward to going out there. She's No.1 in the world, she's won all the tournaments recently, so I feel like I've got no pressure."
Raducanu improves to 4-5 on the season with her victory, and 2-0 on clay. It obviously pales in comparison to Swiatek, the one-woman wrecking ball that has won her last 26 sets. The top-ranked Pole is 29-3 on the season, and ranks first in return points and return games won.
Swiatek and Raducanu have never met at the tour-level, but the Pole did defeat the British star in the juniors at Wimbledon in 2018, 6-0, 6-1.
Kontaveit stretches indoor streak to 22
Anett Kontaveit closed out the evening with a 2-6, 6-3, 7-6(5) victory over Ekaterina Alexandrova. The No.5 seed, who faces Aryna Sabalenka on Friday, has now won 22 straight indoor matches. Per the WTA, her streak includes titles at Ostrava, Moscow, and Cluj-Napoca last year, and another title in St. Petersburg this year.
The quarterfinals are set at Stuttgart, here is how they shape up: