DAY three of the Internationaux de Strasbourg saw the beginning of the Round of 16, with the two top seeds of the day in second seed Elina Svitolina and fifth seed Elena Rybakina heading through to the quarter finals. Qualifier Zhang Shuai and Jil Teichmann joined the duo in the next round after respective wins, with all four matches decided in straight sets but decidedly not easy victories, with each match featuring at least one tiebreaker.  

Svitolina was put through the ringer by Pole Magda Linette, only just coming away with the first set after a 7-6 (7-0) tiebreaker and relegated to a 1-4 start to the second as Linette continued to control proceedings. But the world number five would not let the win get away from her, working her way back into the match despite Linette’s heavy backhand hitting winners aplenty, eventually working back to 4-4. Linette managed to hold on and was serving for the set before Svitolina grabbed the momentum head on and wasted no time to storm through the last two games and come away with the 7-6 7-5 victory.

“It definitely was not easy,” Svitolina said post-match. “She was fighting back, she was trying to produce a good level; I was up and down. “It’s not easy to come from another tournament with different balls, different conditions. I was trying just to fight and in the end I was lucky I finished in two sets.”

Teichmann was given a tough time by Russian Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, eventually disposing of her higher ranked opposition in just under two hours, 7-6 7-5. The left-hander was far more clinical on both her service games and Pavlyuchenkova’s, making the most of the Russian’s double faults but it did not come easy. Teichmann will have another challenge when she takes on Svitolina in the quarter finals, with the two players coming away with almost identical win times and scores despite their differing contests.

Rybakina heads through to the next round to take on Zhang, and while she was in control early she had a tough second set against Alize Cornet, who battled hard in a huge second set but to no avail as the Kazakh pulled through for her first clay-court quarterfinal of the season. Cornet, a former winner here on home soil, fought back from match points the way of Rybakina on two separate occasions – 5-3 and 5-4 – in the huge comeback, charging through the remainder of the set but going down in the tiebreaker for a 6-3 7-6 (10-8) finish. 

“I was just focusing on every point, because it’s not the first time I’m actually up [in the score],” Rybakina told press after the match. “Last tournament in Rome, I was up, for example, and my concentration went down. I just knew that I had to focus on every point. It doesn’t matter, the score, just work every point and try to do my best.”

Frenchwoman Cornet was one of two homegrown talents to go down on the day, joined by teenager Clara Burel who was defeated by Zhang 6-3 7-6. Like Cornet, Burel sparked a comeback and was in touching distance of the quarter finals but could not finish the match against her far more experienced opposition despite winning more points off her first serve with 60 per cent compared to Zhang’s 51 per cent. Zhang capitalised off Burel’s weaker second serve, winning 73 per cent of the Frenchwoman’s second serve return points, and converted five of eight break points compared to Burel’s four of 15.