Last year's semifinalist Daria Kasatkina fired the Shot of the Day en route to a 6-3, 6-4 victory over former finalist Marketa Vondrousova in the second round of Roland Garros on Wednesday.
French Open: Scores | Order of play | Draw
Down 3-2 in the second set, No.9 seed Kasatkina ended a rally with a stunning tweener winner, propelling herself to a 1-hour and 42-minute win against World No.60 Vondrousova.
THIS tweener 🫢#RolandGarros | @DKasatkina pic.twitter.com/rlKg6uwmCy
— Roland-Garros (@rolandgarros) May 31, 2023
"I made a tweener winner in Toronto 2017 against Roberta Vinci, so I've got two now," Kasatkina said afterwards. "Don't think that you are going to hit a tweener, just hit it. Every time when I'm thinking about it, it goes anywhere. ... I was just running and not even thinking. I even forgot the moment when it happened, so I was actually surprised."
Kasatkina will next have her first career meeting with unseeded Peyton Stearns in the third round. No.69-ranked Stearns scored the first Top 20 win of her career on Wednesday, upsetting No.17 seed Jelena Ostapenko 6-3, 1-6, 6-2 in 1 hour and 43 minutes.
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"I know [Stearns is doing] very good here," Kasatkina said. "She has a good run, so it's going to be a tough match. Plus, she's very pumped playing in a Slam. I remember myself in the situation, so it's very dangerous. It's going to be a good match."
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World No.9 Kasatkina was 4-for-11 on break points on Wednesday, while Vondrousova only converted two of her 12 break points. Kasatkina continues her consistent clay-court swing, where she followed up a Charleston semifinal with Round of 16 showings in Madrid and Rome.
Kasatkina, who reached her first Grand Slam semifinal in Paris last year, edged ahead 3-2 in her head-to-head with Czech left-hander Vondrousova, who made the 2019 Roland Garros final as an unseeded teenager.
Zheng Qinwen, Samsonova suffer upsets: A handful of Top 20 players lost on Wednesday. Yulia Putintseva beat one of them by upsetting No.19 seed Zheng Qinwen 6-3, 4-6, 6-2 in 2 hours and 25 minutes.
Putintseva, who has twice reached the French Open quarterfinals in 2016 and 2018, reeled off the last four games of the match to collect the win. It is the sixth time Putintseva has defeated a Top 20 player at a Grand Slam event.
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Shortly thereafter, former finalist Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova overcame No.15 seed Liudmila Samsonova 4-6, 7-5, 7-5 in 3 hours and 6 minutes. Pavlyuchenkova won the last five games of the clash from 5-2 down in the third set.
WHAT A COMEBACK 🤯
— Roland-Garros (@rolandgarros) May 31, 2023
2021 runner-up @NastiaPav fights back from 2-5 down in the third to upset No.15 seed Samsonova 4-6, 7-5, 7-5.#RolandGarros pic.twitter.com/1pGSvtf4G0
Pavlyuchenkova reached her first Grand Slam final in Paris in 2021, losing a three-set final to Barbora Krejcikova. Pavlyuchenkova missed most of last season due to injuries, but she made her first tour-level quarterfinal of her comeback last week in Strasbourg.
Former World No.11 Pavlyuchenkova will face another Anastasia in the next round -- No.24 seed Anastasia Potapova, who outlasted Egypt's Maya Sherif 3-6, 6-4, 6-1 in 2 hours and 13 minutes.