March 13 ------ Madison Keys kept her winning streak alive against Donna Vekic 4-6, 7-6(7), 6-3 to reach the Indian Wells quarter-finals as fellow American Coco Gauff fell to Swiss wildcard Belinda Bencic and top-ranked Aryna Sabalenka rolled through. The Australian Open champion Keys notched her 15th straight victory with seven aces against the 19th seed, recovering from a slow start to set up a meeting with the Tokyo Olympic champion Bencic.
Vekic, the silver medallist in Paris, put up a terrific defence in the first set, fending off three break points in the second game and another in the fourth, and dropped only three of her first-serve points. She had a 5-3 head start in the tiebreak but Keys dug in her heels, clinching it with an unreturnable serve as the Croatian thrust her racquet to the court in frustration. Keys took the momentum from there and she closed out the comeback win with one of her lethal forehands to wild cheers from the home fans.
The American joy was tempered earlier in the day, as Bencic pulled off the upset against the third seed Gauff, 3-6 6-3 6-4, less than a year after giving birth. In the tightly-contested third set, it was Bencic who struck first as she came back from 0-40 down to break Gauff for a 5-4 lead and closed out the victory on her first match point when the top-ranked American ripped a forward long. "Obviously, this is why you are practicing and working hard all your life, so it's super nice to play in this kind of atmosphere," Bencic said in her on-court interview. "The way you cheered before the match, I had chills and goosebumps and I kind of just put the serve into the court because I was so nervous."
Gauff started aggressively and committed five double faults in the first set, including three in one game, but was only broken once en route to wrapping it up in 51 minutes when Bencic sent a forward wide. But Bencic was firing on all cylinders in the middle set and, despite twice requiring medical attention for foot and hand issues, built a 4-1 lead before securing it when Gauff returned a serve into the net. Women's top seed Aryna Sabalenka easily dispatched British lucky loser Sonay Kartal 6-1 6-2, and will meet either Jasmine Paolini or Liudmila Samsonova in the final eight.
In other early action, 11th seed Ben Shelton beat fellow American Brandon Nakashima 7-6(6) 6-1 to set up a quarter-final against third seed Taylor Fritz or Briton Jack Draper. Men's second seed Carlos Alcaraz will kick off the evening session against Bulgarian Grigor Dimitrov for a spot in the quarter-finals against Argentine Francisco Cerundolo or Austrian Alex de Minaur.
Source: reuters.com
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