London, July 2 (IANS) Tunisian battler Ons Jabeur continued her dream run at Wimbledon 2021 as she stormed into the women’s singles fourth round after packing off former champion Garbine Muguruza of Spain in three sets on Friday.
The 26-year-old Ons lost the first set but came back strongly to ground out a 5-7, 6-3, 6-2 victory in the third round encounter with Garbine, who had won the title here in 2017.
With this victory, the right-handed Tunisian made it to the history book as the first Arab woman to reach the fourth round at Wimbledon. Ons had earlier stunned five-time Wimbledon women’s singles champion, Venus Williams, in the second round.
On Friday, Ons, the 21st seed here, got off to a nervy start against the 11th seeded Garbine as she lost her first game at Centre Court on love. However, she broke back in the sixth game to level scores. They traded serves again to make it 5-5 before Garbine broke her serve in the 11th game to secure the first set.
Ons, who had settled down by this time, broke Garbine’s serve in the eighth game to win the second set. She won the first 11 points of the decider and Garbine tried to fight back and avoided going 0-3 down. She saved 24 break-points, Ons could not be denied as she overcame her 27-year-old Spanish opponent on her second match point.
In other matches on the fifth day of the competition, second seed Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus defeated Shelby Rogers of United States 6-1, 6-4 in 66 minutes, seventh seed Iga Swiatek of Poland outplayed Irina-Camelia Begu of Romania 6-1, 6-0 while eighth-seeded Karolina Pliskova of Czech Republic defeated compatriot Tereza Martincova 6-3, 6-3.
–IANS
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