Petra Kvitova continues to demonstrate while she is one of the favourites to take the title in the Caja M\u00e1gica for the fourth time in her career. The second seed saw off Kristina Mladenovic 6-3, 7-6(5).<\/p>\n
Kvitova, the only player to have won more than one WTA title this season, did not give an inch to Mladenovic, who reached the main draw after coming through the qualifying rounds. The Czech player now awaits the winner of the clash between the Romanian Sorana Cirstea and French player Caroline Garcia.<\/p>\n
Earlier, also in the Manolo Santana Stadium, US player Sloane Stephens maintained her solid start to this Mutua Madrid Open. The tournament\u2019s eighth seed reached the last sixteen by beating one of the form players coming into the Caja M\u00e1gica, the Belarusian Victoria Azarenka 6-4, 2-6, 6-2.<\/p>\n
Stephens pounced upon a serving mistake from \u2018Vika\u2019 in the tenth game of the first set to take it 6-4. The Belarusian came out like a force of nature in the second, which she eventually won 2-6. The third and decisive set was very tight, with both players well aware of what was at stake. But in the end the North American justified her ranking against a determined Azarenka to seal the final set 6-2. Stephens\u2019 opponent in the last sixteen will be the victor of the tie between Frenchwoman Aliz\u00e9 Cornet and the Chinese Saisai Zheng.<\/p>\n
For her part, Kiki Bertens was the first player to reach the third round of the Mutua Madrid Open after defeating Jelena Ostapenko 6-4, 6-3. In the match that opened the day in the Arantxa S\u00e1nchez Stadium, the 7th<\/sup>\u00a0seed\u2019s experience showed against an Ostapenko who played well but was unable to see off the Dutch player. In the last sixteen, Bertens will meet another Latvian in 12th<\/sup>\u00a0seed Anastasija Sevastova.<\/p>\n Australian player Ashleigh Barty completed a clean sweep for the seeds in their second round matches. The 9th<\/sup>\u00a0seed beat US player Danielle Collins 6-1, 1-6, 6-1. Barty will be bidding for a place in the quarter-finals against Kazakhstani player Yulia Putintseva.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Other results from the day\u2019s play:<\/p>\n [12] Anastasija Sevastova (LAT)<\/strong>\u00a0df. Mihaela Buzarnescu (ROM) 6-3, 6-4<\/p>\n Yulia Putintseva (KAZ)<\/strong>\u00a0df. Pauline Parmentier (FRA) 6-4, 4-6, 6-3<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Petra Kvitova continues to demonstrate while she is one of the favourites to take the title in the Caja M\u00e1gica for the fourth time in her career. The second seed saw off Kristina Mladenovic 6-3, 7-6(5). Kvitova, the only player to have won more than one WTA title this season, did not give an inch […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":76570,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"mc4wp_mailchimp_campaign":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[719,720,713,717,714,715,721,716,718],"class_list":["post-76567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mutua-news","tag-azarenka-en","tag-barty-en","tag-bertens","tag-collins","tag-garcia","tag-kvitova-en","tag-mladenovic-en","tag-ostapenko-en","tag-stephens"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/desarrollo.mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/desarrollo.mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/desarrollo.mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desarrollo.mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desarrollo.mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76567"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/desarrollo.mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76567\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desarrollo.mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/desarrollo.mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desarrollo.mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desarrollo.mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}