KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA — It took nearly ten months for world No.139 Kristina Kucova to claim her first main draw win on the WTA Tour when she beat Stefanie Voegele of Switzerland in the first round of the BMW Malaysian Open on Monday.
And this afternoon, the 25-year-old has booked her first quarter-final appearance since July 2014 in Bucharest, after she powered past former winner Hsieh Su-wei of Taiwan 6-1, 3-6, 6-3 at the Kuala Lumpur Golf and Country Club.
In Bucharest, Kucova even made it to last four before losing to Roberta Vinci. That was her best ever outing on the WTA Tour.
“I’m really happy that I took my chances this time and reached the quarter-finals,” said Kucova who aims to break into the world top 100 for the first time this season.
“Before the tournament, I was just hoping to make the main draw and not having to go through qualifying rounds.”
Kucova, who got off her season with first round exit in Kaoshiung and failed to make the tournament proper in Brisbane and Dubai, has indeed showed her desire to march far in the tournament.
In the opening set, she came out firing on all cylinders to seize early advantage over the Taiwanese No.1. Kucova then went 2-0 ahead and almost broke Su-wei’s serve in the third game to go three-up. But the 2012 champion denied her and turned the contest around to race to a 5-2 lead and subsequently win 6-3.
“I played really good in the first set, but in the second, after getting two in front, I made mistakes as I was eager to make it 3-0. Then, Su-wei started to play really well and come back in the match.”
A 10-minute break before the deciding set did wonders for Kucova, who appeared to have hard timecoping with the heat.
“I was struggling with the heat but the short break before the third set helped me to cool down a little bit and I managed to play as good as the first set.”
Former world No.5 Eugenie Bouchard, the sixth seed is also through the last eight after notching another straight forward win against Japan’s Kurumi Nara 6-1, 6-2.
Bouchard, who opened her campaign on Monday thumping Zhang Ling 6-3, 6-1, said: “No match is easy. I was focus on every single point and tried to play aggressively and it worked well.”
Third seed Sabine Lisicki reached her first tour quarter-finals since Birmingham in June, last year, after a hard-fought 7-5, 6-3 win over qualifier Barbora Krejcikova of the Czech Republic in the BMW Malaysian Open at the Kuala Lumpur Golf. The German was affected by the weather and also had issues with her first serve but she picked up her game as the match progressed to win in 110 minutes.
The World No 31 landed only 43 per cent of his first serves in the first set but improved to 68 percent in the second set in her maiden meeting against the World No 191.
“It was humid and I did not like the way I started the match. I was not serving well and the ball was travelling differently in the air. I had to adjust to these difficult conditions,” said Sabine after the match.
“I need to take things step-by-step and improve gradually…I believe at some point everything will Sabine, who has recorded four tour titles with her last in Hong Kong in 2014, will play Great Britain’s Naomi Broady or qualifier Yang Zhaoxuan of China in the quarter-finals on Friday.
