Austin, Texas. Katy Wolynets saved match point and won the last seven games to come back and beat third place Anastasia Potapova 5-7, 6-2, 7-5 at the ATX Open to reach her first WTA quarter-final.
Volynets, the 21-year-old California native ranked 92nd, was just one point away from defeat, trailing 5-0 in the third set and facing a break point. But she took the next three points to hold the pitch and was on her way to a big turnaround.
“At 0-5 I’m really like, ‘Please don’t bagel! I really don’t want to be eaten. And then I get the first game, and then I get more confidence in the second game,” Wolynets said. “And to be honest, it was pretty fast.
In the end, she scored 27 of the last 32 points in the match.
“The match,” Volynets said, “was definitely like a roller coaster.”
In January, Volynets qualified for the Australian Open and advanced to the third round of a Grand Slam for the first time.
Wolynets will now face Peyton Stearns, who last year won the NCAA singles championship for the University of Texas, for a spot in the semi-finals of the state’s first hard-surface tournament. Stearns beat Mirjam Bjorklund 6-3, 7-5 on Wednesday night in a match between the two wild card holders.
The highest seeded woman left on the field, No. 4 Sloane Stephens, beat qualifier Heather Watson 6-4, 6-4. Stevens, the 2017 US Open champion, will face 88th-placed Varvara Gracheva in the quarterfinals. This is a rematch of the competition Stevens won last week in Merida, Mexico.
Gracheva, who knocked Magda Lynette out of the first round in Austin, advanced on Wednesday by defeating Anna Blinkova 6-3, 6-7(5), 6-1 in the All-Russia match.
Volynets won the last 7 games, beating Potapova in Austin originally appeared on NBCSports.com
Source: sports.yahoo.com
