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The 24-year-old Hungarian earned a first-round
win in Wednesday in the Taiwan Open, beating Arina Rodionova of
Australia 6-3, 6-2 in Taipei.
Babos, the fourth seed, is the top remaining player in the draw
after No. 1 Shuai Peng of China, No. 2 Shuai Zhang of China and
No. 3 Samantha Stosur of Australia all crashed out in the
opening round.
Last week, Babos teamed with France's Kristina Mladenovic to
beat Russians Ekaterina Makarova and Elena Vesnina in straight
sets in the Australian Open women's doubles final. Babos also
got to the mixed doubles final at Melbourne with partner Rohan
Bopanna of India before losing to Canada's Gabriela Dabrowski
and Croatia's Mate Pavic.
Babos, who is ranked 45th in the world in singles, owns two
career WTA Tour singles titles, the 2012 Monterrey (Mexico) Open
and the 2017 Hungarian Ladies Open in her native country.
Her biggest difficulty Wednesday was closing out the match. She
had three match points on Rodionova's serve at 5-1 in the second
set but lost the game. Babos subsequently served out the match,
completing the win in 77 minutes.
In the second round, Babos will meet Slovenia's Dalila
Jakupovic, who routed Australia's Lizette Cabrera 6-0, 6-1 on
Wednesday.
Jakupovic needed just 19 minutes to power through the first set
and 51 minutes to seal the match. She put 71 percent of her
first serves in play and won 84 percent of those points. Cabrera
had a 61 percent first-serve rate and won only 44 percent of
those points.
The first player to advance to the Taiwan quarterfinals was
Ukraine's Kateryna Kozlova, a 3-6, 6-2, 7-6 (4) winner over
China's Ying-Ying Duan in second-round action Wednesday. Kozlova
beat Zhang in the first round.
In the decisive tiebreaker, the returner won five of the first
six points. When Kozlova eventually won back-to-back service
points, she built a 6-3 lead, and she closed out the victory two
points later.
--Field Level Media
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