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CHINA – Angelique Kerber survived a scare in her first match as world number one while French Open champion Garbine Muguruza crashed out in Wuhan on Tuesday.
The US and Australian Open champion, who had a bye in the first round, made a convincing start before missing two set points and allowing Kristina Mladenovic to take the first set in a tie break.
But the German then swept through the rest of the match, winning 6-7 (4/7), 6-1, 6-4 to set up a third-round meeting with two-time Wimbledon champion Petra Kvitova.
“I was trying to find my rhythm because I was not playing my best in the first set,” top seed Kerber said after the match.
Meanwhile, Muguruza just couldn’t master former world number one Jelena Jankovic, pushing her to a tie break in the second set but still coming up short at 6-4, 7-6 (7/2).
“I felt like I was in control of the match, but the last shot was not there. I made maybe too many mistakes against Jankovic,” she told reporters.
The Spaniard bagged her first Grand Slam title at Roland Garros this year and rose to a career-high ranking of two, but the early round loss at Wuhan puts her qualification for the eight-player WTA Finals in Singapore in doubt.
Muguruza was the second seeded casualty of the day after last year’s US Open finalist Roberta Vinci fell to Yaroslava Shvedova 7-5, 6-2 – her second defeat at the hands of the Kazakh this year. (AFP)
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