Jessica Pegula was up for another successful run at a WTA 1000 tournament, this time at the 2023 China Open, but she was stopped.
After beating Anna Blinkova in her first match in Beijing, the second highest-ranked American ran into a former Roland Garros champion, the 13th-seeded Jelena Ostapenko, who got into the third round after her second-round opponent, Linda Noskova, withdrew from the event.
The two met four times before, with their first two matches dating back to 2015, but in the two most recent meetings, the American always managed to win, with both matches being played in Doha, Qatar.
But this time around, it was a different story. Pegula started well, she saved two break points in the second game, and after that, she managed to break her opponent's serve, leading 2-1 in the opener.
However, the Latvian never gave up in the first set, breaking her opponent back, and doing the same thing after Pegula added one more break, and soon, the score was tied at four games each before the final conclusion of the set.
It seemed that only a tie-break could dissect this set, as Pegula led 40-0 on her serve at 4-5. Yet, Ostapenko managed to win five consecutive points and win the opening set of the match 6-4.
The American was certainly caught off-guard by the ending of the first set, and that's also maybe why she entered the second set on the back foot. Pegula lost the first two games, and despite having four break points to break back in the third, she couldn't use them.
After that, the American never got a chance to break her opponent's serve, and after Ostapenko added one more break of serve, the match was over, with the Latvian winning 6-4, 6-2, and booking the 2023 China Open quarterfinal against either Ukraine's Marta Kostyuk or Russia's Liudmila Samsonova.
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