Sara Sorribes, player number 47 in the world ranking, passed like a gale over the Russian Varvara Gracheva (73), 6-2 and 6-1, in the round of 16 of the Istanbul tennis tournamentof which the Spanish is seventh seeded.
The player from Castellón began by giving up her serve, but recovered it immediately and cornered her rival with four games in a row. She still had time to break the Russian a third time before taking the opening set.
In the second set, Sorribes’ superiority was even more manifest, with another three breaks that certified his passage to the quarterfinals, in which will face the winner of the clash between the Croatian Petra Martic and the Russian Anastasia Potapova.
Both players had met once before, last year in Tenerife, with the Muscovite winning 6-4, 5-7, 7-6 (4).
The Belgian Elise Mertens, 23 in the WTA ranking, is the first favorite of the Istanbul tournament draw, a WTA 250 with a purse of 251,750 dollars in prizes and which is played on clay.