It was an evening of unexpected results and premature goodbyes, but also one with the unforeseen\u00a0gift of a chance to discover new players who deserve their chance in the spotlight: Louisa Chirico and\u00a0Irina-Camelia Begu, who saw off Ana Ivanovic and Garbi\u00f1e Muguruza respectively.<\/p>\n
For Begu, the win over the third seed (5-7, 7-6 (4), 6-3) was her first victory against a member of the\u00a0top 5. The Romanian world number 35 has now produced two first-class performances in as many\u00a0days at the Mutua Madrid Open, knocking out the last two Wimbledon runners-up with an impressive\u00a0array of shots.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe deserved to win today. She played like I’ve never seen her before\u201d, admitted Muguruza,\u00a0elegantly praising her opponent after the defeat.<\/p>\n
For her part, Chirico is just 19 and occupies position 130 in the WTA ranking. She produced the upset\u00a0of the day on Monday by seeing off 14 th seed Ana Ivanovic, who despite winning the first set 7-5, was\u00a0unable to prevent a comeback from the young New Yorker (5-7, 6-1, 6-3).<\/p>\n
The US player, who came through qualifying, will now meet fourth seed, Victoria Azarenka, who beat\u00a0Aliz\u00e9 Cornet (6-3, 6-2).<\/p>\n
Lucas Pouille also produced a result that looked unlikely on paper. The Frenchman made the most of\u00a0his momentum from the qualifying rounds to send home 12th seed David Goffin. The Belgian, who\u00a0reached the quarter-finals in Munich (losing to Alexander Zverev), was faced with an inspired\u00a0opponent; Pouille was coming off the back of an impressive performance in Bucharest, where he lost\u00a0the final to Fernando Verdasco.<\/p>\n
In addition, Denis Istomin made the most of his qualification by beating Teymuraz Gabashvili (6-1, 6-4) in one hour. The Uzbek strung together eleven aces and only faced one break point, which he\u00a0saved without difficulty.<\/p>\n
Saving break points was key to survival for Joao Sousa, who defeated Nicolas Mahut 6-4, 6-4. The\u00a0Portuguese will now take on Roger Federer’s replacement, Catalan player Marcel Granollers, who is\u00a0in the main draw as a lucky loser.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It was an evening of unexpected results and premature goodbyes, but also one with the unforeseen\u00a0gift of a chance to discover new players who deserve their chance in the spotlight: Louisa Chirico and\u00a0Irina-Camelia Begu, who saw off Ana Ivanovic and Garbi\u00f1e Muguruza respectively. For Begu, the win over the third seed (5-7, 7-6 (4), 6-3) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":76988,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"mc4wp_mailchimp_campaign":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[787,41,146,786,788,16,17,42],"class_list":["post-76987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mutua-news","tag-ana-ivanovic-en","tag-atp-en","tag-garbine-muguruza-en","tag-irina-carmelia-pegu","tag-louisa-chirico-en","tag-madrid-en","tag-mutua-madrid-open-en","tag-wta-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76987","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76987"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76987\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76988"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}