Caroline Garcia fought back from a set down to overcome third-seed Carla Suarez Navarro 4-6 6-4 6-3 in the second round of the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Tournament.
Suarez Navarro went up a set and looked to be on her way to a straight-set win when she went up a break in the second set. Garcia bounced back from a break down twice in the second set to pull away to 4-1. Suarez Navarro served to stay in the set and she fended off two set points but Garcia converted the third chance forcing the match to the decider.
Garcia went up a break to take a 3-1 in the third set and held her service game to pull away to 4-1. Suarez Navarro saved four break point chances to claw her back into the match to 2-4 in a marathon sixth game. Garcia served for the match and was four points from victory at 5-3 15-15 when the match was suspended for 3 hours and 39 minutes by a thunderstorm. As the match resumed, the 22-year-old player closed out on her match point as Suarez Navarro hit her return into the net.
“I stayed positive all the match. It worked well. I am very happy to finis hit”, said Garcia.
Suarez is the fifth of eight seeds to be knocked out so far in Dubai after Belinda Bencic, Karolina Pliskova, Roberta Vinci and Svetlana Kuznetsova lost in the first round.
After the defeat of Suarez Navarro, who defended the quarter finals reached last year at the Dubai tournament, Italian Roberta Vinci overtook the Spanish player by 25 points (3325 points to 3300) moving up from 13th to 10th place in the WTA Ranking. Vinci was defeated by Yaroslava Schvedova in the first round just two days after her title in St. Petersburg.
Barbora Strykova came back from a set and a break down to overcome Julia Georges 2-6 6-3 6-1.
“I cannot believe how slow I started, but I am happy that I got the win. I wasn’t feeling well at the beginning but I pulled through in my head. It was tough”, said Strykova.
