Day Two of the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships is well underway with comprehensive wins in particular for Leylah Fernandez and Victoria Azarenka. Both of whom are in good form as of late.
Fernandez reached the Quarter-Final at the recent Qatar Open, she lost to Elena Rybakina after previously taking down Qinwen Zheng, Paula Badosa and Liudmila Samsonova. She was facing American ace, Bernarda Pera and eased through 6-3, 6-2. Next up is Jasmine Paolini.
Claiming it in just over an hour and 20 minutes, she bided her time in the opening set and after Pera got multiple break point chances, she shut the door and broke to go 4-2 up. This proved vital in the context of the set as that glimmer of light saw Fernandez walk on through to go on to claim it at 6-3.
In the second set, it was more comprehensive, but it was anything but in the opening stages with all but two games in the set being breaks. Neither could hold on to their serve with Fernandez though finally holding at 3-2 to go 4-2 up and the American lost her serve one more time en-route to defeat.
Also through this morning were Victoria Azarenka who was comprehensively defeated by Iga Swiatek in the Quarter-Finals in Doha, but also defeated Jelena Ostapenko again. She eased through against Arantxa Rus on Monday morning in a 6-2, 6-4 win. Karolina Pliskova continues to play and saw off Shuai Zhang 6-3, 7-5.
Jelena Ostapenko, Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, Paula Badosa and Elina Svitolina are also among those in action on Monday with the first round well underway in Dubai.
It will be a quick turnaround for Azarenka and Fernandez with the former set to face Elena Rybakina tomorrow and the latter facing Paolini. Coco Gauff, Maria Sakkari, Iga Swiatek and Aryna Sabalenka are also all slated to begin their campaigns on Tuesday in a stacked schedule.