Adelaide: World number nine Daria Kasatkina swept into the Adelaide International second round yesterday but Paris Olympic silver medallist Donna Vekic crashed to her third straight loss of the season.
Spain’s Paula Badosa also narrowly avoided defeat, battling for nearly three hours to complete a 6-7 (5/7), 6-3, 7-5 comeback win over American Peyton Stearns.
“I’m so tired, I went through all the emotions,” said Badosa, a former world number two, now ranked 12.
Russia’s Kasatkina, runner-up at the last two editions of the Australian Open warm-up event, broke Australia’s Olivia Gadecki five times to advance 6-2, 6-3.
The match featured four service breaks in the first five games as third seed Kasatkina got re-acquainted with the Memorial Drive centre court.
She will next face last year’s Australian Open and Wimbledon junior runner-up Emerson Jones, a wildcard entry who scored an impressive 6-4, 6-0 win over China’s Wang Xinyu.
Croatia’s Vekic, a Wimbledon semi-finalist last year, saw her Australian Open build-up go from bad to worse with a 6-2, 6-3 defeat to Kazakhstan’s Yulia Putintseva.
Victory moved Putintseva into a second-round clash against either American fourth seed Danielle Collins or Tunisian wildcard Ons Jabeur, a three-time Grand Slam finalist.
