Dubai PHOTOS: Halep saves match point against Jabeur to advance to quarterfinals

February 19, 2020

Wednesday at the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships featured eight second-round matches that shaped up the tournament’s quarterfinal field.

The day opened with second seed Karolina Pliskova‘s commanding 6-1 6-2 victory over Kristina Mladenovic, followed by the continued progress of qualifier Jennifer Brady, who won 11 of the last 12 games to recover from a 6-4 4-1 deficit against Marketa Vondrousova and win 4-6 6-4 6-1.

Australian Open finalist and ninth seed Garbine Muguruza is still enjoying good results, her latest being a win in an entertaining encounter with talented Veronika Kudermetova 7-5 4-6 6-4. Eighth seed Petra Martic beat Barbora Strycova 6-3 6-3, while Elena Rybakina reached her fourth quarterfinal of the season by knocking out Katerina Siniakova with the same scoreline.

Seventh seed Aryna Sabalenka enjoyed a straight-set win over Elise Mertens, just as Anett Kontaveit over Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova.

The highlight of the day was definitely top seed Simona Halep‘s thriller against wildcard Ons Jabeur, who recovered from 1-4 to 4-4 in the decider and fought off three match points in the tiebreak before earning one of her own. Halep saved that match point and Jabeur’s back-to-back forehand misses gave the favorite a fourth match point which she didn’t miss, 1-6 6-2 7-6(7).

It’s hard to believe, but our hard-working photographer Jimmie48 made it to all but one of these second-round singles matches and to almost all doubles matches on Wednesday’s schedule. Enjoy his photo gallery!