WITH a Top 12 spot up for grabs providing the WTA 500 tournament goes well, Ukrainian Marta Kostyuk was not mucking around in the Korea Open yesterday. The 18th ranked talent is one of five Top 20 players headlining the field and made light work of Netherlands’ Arantxa Rus, 6-3 6-1 in an hour and 18 minutes.

Fifth seed Kostyuk entered the match against the 33-year-old Rus as strong favourite, with the Dutchwoman ranked 80th in the world. The pair have split their two head-to-head matches, but the last came in the qualifying stages of Valencia way back in 2019.

On the South Korean hardcourts, the Ukrainian stepped up to win comfortably despite serving 10 double faults in the game. She only ran at a 46 per cent efficiency off her serve, but when she did get it in, Kostyuk won a far superior 71 per cent of the points compared to Rus’ 50 per cent.

Kostyuk also broke six times from a massive 14 chances, while also only being broken twice throughout the contest. After Rus was competitive to bring the first set to 3-5, Kostyuk put the foot down to destroy her opponent, breaking three times in the final set alone and winning six consecutive games to race out to a 5-0 lead before completing the victory.

Boasting bucketloads of talent and just needing the consistency to accompany it, Kostyuk was clearly the more dominant player and looked unstoppable from her baseline work to her approach shots. Most of the points came off her racquet as Rus was able to defend throughout the first set, but could not match the Ukrainian’s power in the second set.

Kostyuk will now face British qualifier Heather Watson in the Round of 16 after Watson took care of another qualifier, China’s 274th ranked Jia-Jing Lu, 6-4 6-4. In other results, Veronika Kudermetova booked a shot at her compatriot and second seed Liudmila Samsonova after a 6-4 6-3 triumph over Shuai Zhang, while seventh and eighth seeds Ekaterina Alexandrova and Yue Yuan respectively won in three-set battles. The other winner across the Round of 32 on day one was Canadian qualifier Carol Zhao.