THE Round of 16 continued at the Upper Austria Ladies Linz with another mostly predictable day on court as the first, second, fifth and sixth seeds all proceed through to the quarter finals, while Oceane Dodin defeated Sorana Cirstea to be the lowest ranked winner on Day 6.

Top seed Aryna Sabalenka blew past Stefanie Voegele to continue her winning form of late, coming away with the 6-0 6-3 victory. While Sabalenka won 75 per cent of her first serve points, she also relegated Voegele to a clumsy 29 per cent winning rate off her second serve making for a fairly convincing win despite the Swiss talent’s fight back in the second set. Second seed Elise Mertens was put through the wringer once more after her two hour victory yesterday, taken to three sets by Vera Zvonareva but fortunately still coming out with the win, 6-4 5-7 6-2 in two and a half hours. While Mertens was not at her most effective on-serve, hitting nine double faults, she still managed to win 56 per cent of her service points. To Zvonareva’s credit, she won almost as many points off her second serve as she did her first, though her first serve was not as efficient as she would have liked winning 46.5 per cent of points.

Both Veronika Kudermetova and Nadia Podoroska came away with wins under pressure, with the latter overcoming an up-and-about Camila Giorgi and outlasting the Italian former Linz champion in the two and a half hour 6-7 6-1 6-4 battle. The two players could rarely be separated, and while Podoroska led majority of the stats sheet, that was mostly down to the second set where she well and truly downed Giorgi and made the most of the her errors. Giorgi came back with a vengeance in the third set but it was not enough, seeing Podoroska manage an excellent 94 per cent winning rate off a 71 per cent clip for the victory.

For Kudermetova, it was a fraction more straightforward but a tough one nonetheless, defeating Arantxa Rus 6-4 1-6 6-3 in an hour and 42 minutes. Intriguingly, while Kudermetova had an overall service point winning rate of 67 per cent and also a marginally higher winning rate on the return, Rus won more points overall with 78 points won compared to Kudermetova’s 76. The final match saw Dodin reign supreme in just the second straight sets win of the day, coming away with the 6-4 6-4 victory credit to an excellent 78.4 per cent winning rate off the first serve and relatively consistent on the second, too.