Emma Raducanu is through to the fourth round of a WTA 1000 event for the first time in her career after upsetting 13th-seeded Beatriz Haddad Maia of Brazil 6-1, 2-6, 6-4 on Monday in the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells, Calif.
Raducanu, a 20-year-old London native, won the 2021 U.S. Open championship after reaching the fourth round at Wimbledon that year. Outside of those two results, she already is enjoying her best-ever performance at any of the tour’s 14 biggest events: the four Grand Slam tournaments and the 10 WTA 1000 tourneys.
Ranked 77th in the world, Raducanu is back in action at Indian Wells after sitting out since February due to an ankle injury and tonsillitis.
Raducanu converted three of her eight break-point opportunities while saving three of Haddad Maia’s five break points.
The prize for the victory: Raducanu will square off with another former U.S. Open winner in the fourth round, when she will face either top-seeded Iga Swiatek of Poland of 32nd-seeded Bianca Andreescu of Canada.
Elsewhere on Monday, fifth-seeded Caroline Garcia of France pulled away for a 6-4, 6-7 (5), 6-1 win over 30th-seeded Leylah Fernandez of Canada. Garcia finished with an 11-5 edge in aces while Fernandez had more double faults, 8-3. Garcia also won 85.7 percent of her first-serve points (42 of 49).
Tenth-seeded Elena Rybakina of Kazakhstan downed 21st-seeded Paula Badosa of Spain 6-3, 7-5, winning the last four games of the first set and five of the last six games of the second set.
The Czech Republic’s Karolina Muchova knocked out 23rd-seeded Martina Trevisan of Italy 6-4, 3-6, 6-4, and Romania’s Sorana Cirstea crushed the United States’ Bernarda Pera 6-3, 6-1.
In addition to Swiatek-Andreescu, two other matches were scheduled for Monday night: fourth-seeded Ons Jabeur of Tunisia vs. the Czech Republic’s Marketa Vondrousova, and eighth-seeded Daria Kasatkina vs. Varvara Gracheva in an all-Russian showdown.
–Field Level Media
