Svitolina spoils teen’s run Down Under
21 January, 2018
Elina Svitolina ended 15-year-old Marta Kostyuk’s run at the Australian Open, met her at the net for a warm embrace and offered some words of encouragement.
With the temperature hitting 40 degrees C for the second straight day, fourth-seeded Svitolina reached the fourth round at the season-opening major for the first time with the 6-2, 6-2 win on Rod Laver Arena.
“She’s a great fighter,” Svitolina, one of five women in contention for the No. 1 ranking, said of her fellow Ukrainian. “We’re going to hear a lot more about her.”
Players were bothered and spectators clamored for shade and mist-spraying fans in searing heat at Melbourne Park, which had organizers on the verge of enforcing the tournament’s extreme heat policy before temperatures dropped quickly after peaking around 2 p.m. local time.
Play can be suspended at the Australian Open if the temperature 40 C and a combination of factors — including temperature, humidity and breeze — reaches an unbearable limit.
Alize Cornet, who needed a medical timeout and a doctor to take her blood pressure as she struggled with heat stress in her 7-5, 6-4 second-round loss to Elise Mertens, was among those suggesting the extreme heat policy needs reviewing.
“I started to feel dizzy ... I was feeling super, super hot. I kind of felt that I could faint at any moment,” she said, adding that while precautions were taken by tournament officials, “playing in this condition is of course very dangerous for the health of the player.
“The limit of not playing the match is really high ... I think this limit should be a little bit lower.”
No. 3-seeded Grigor Dimitrov beat No. 30 Andrey Rublev 6-3, 4-6, 6-4, 6-4 in a little more than 3 hours in an afternoon match on Rod Laver Arena and said “the heat didn’t scare me at all today — that’s a good sign.”
His fourth-round opponent was to be decided later in the match between local hope Nick Kyrgios and 2008 finalist Jo-Wilfried Tsonga.
Kyle Edmund was the first man into the fourth round, overcoming Nikoloz Basilashvili 7-6 (7-0), 3-6, 4-6, 6-0, 7-5 in 3½ hours on open court in the peak of the heat. No. 10 Pablo Carreno Busta had a 7-6 (7-4), 4-6, 7-5, 7-5 win over No. 23 Gilles Muller.
Kostyuk entered the tournament ranked No. 521 — a number that will likely be halved next month — and had wins over 25th-seeded Peng Shuai and Olivia Rogowska to become the youngest player to win main-draw matches at the Australian Open since Martina Hingis in 1996.
The step-up to facing a top 10 player was too much for Kostyuk on Friday.
She had nine double faults, including on match point, and only put 37 percent of her first serves into play.
Svitolina, the only seeded player still in contention in her quarter, had five aces, only 11 unforced errors and didn’t serve a double fault in the 59-minute match.
Vandeweghe slapped with fine
Meanwhile, Coco Vandeweghe has earned the largest fine of the 2018 Australian Open so far — a $10,000 penalty for unsporting conduct for screaming an obscenity at her first-round opponent, Timea Babos.
Vandeweghe said after the match that she was irritated by what she described as excessive celebrating by her Hungarian opponent during their match.
The 10th-seeded Vandeweghe was assessed a code violation for the obscenity and delay of game for insisting on eating a banana during a changeover, getting docked a point in the second set of her 7-6 (7-4), 6-2 loss.