AUSTRALIAN Open champion and number one seed at Lyon, Sofia Kenin has survived a match point down to come back and post a hard-fought win over Romanian, Jaqueline Cristian in the Round of 16.

The American was one of four players through to the final eight with the victory in two hours and 31 minutes. She was stunned in the first set, dropping it in a tiebreaker 7-5, and then found herself down in the second set having to protect a match point at 3-5, before winning the last four games of the set to level the match with a 7-5 second set. Then she stepped up in the last, overcoming some nerves and miscalculations early in the match to win 6-7 7-5 6-4 and make her way through to the quarter finals to face Frenchwoman, Oceane Dodin. Cristian, who is ranked 173rd in the world, has been in good form of late and she was not afraid of the Grand Slam champion, serving a whopping 11 aces and winning 69.8 per cent of her first serve points and 45.7 per cent of her second serve points. She also broke the American four times, but was eventually broken six times herself which cost her in the end. Overall it was a promising performance but not enough to secure the win.

In the other Round of 16 results, German Anna-Lena Friedsam did follow through with an upset of a top seed, ousting Frenchwoman and second seed, Kristina Mladenovic 6-3 6-3, while it was better news for the other two seeds in the draw. Seventh seed Russian, Daria Kasatkina downed Romanian Irina Bara, while eighth seed Slovakian, Viktoria Kuzmova knocked out Czech Tereza Martincova.

ROUND OF 16 RESULTS:

[1] S. Kenin (USA) defeated J. Cristian (ROU) 6-7 7-5 6-4
A. Friedsam (GER) defeated [2] K. Mladenovic (FRA) 6-3 6-3
[7] D. Kasatkina (RUS) defeated I. Bara (ROU) 6-3 6-2
[8] V. Kuzmova (SVK) defeated T. Martincova (CZE) 6-4 4-6 6-4