Mertens and Kudermetova advance at Upper Austria Ladies' Linz

Elise Mertens and Veronika Kudermetova are through to the next round of the Uppers Austria Ladies' Linz following strong displays and victories on Wednesday.

Barbara Haas was in the centre of attention ahead of the Linz WTA event with the native Austrian hoping for a great run in Linz. Today she stepped out against Kudermetova and the 54-minute performance she put forward wasn't what many expected. Kudermetova dominated the match from start to finish winning 6-0 6-0. The Austrian struggled immensely on her serve which allowed Kudermetova to play her aggressive style which won her many rallies. Haas tried and even carved out two break points but ultimately she got smashed by a better player and that was that.

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Another interesting match was between Kalinina and Mertens. Mertens is one of the favourites for this event but she has fierce competition so it won't be easy. The Ukrainian came out strong against Mertens playing a style that frustrated the Belgian considerably. She did not know how to handle that so Kalinina jumped out to an early lead which she turned into a 6-2 opening set victory. Mertens responded in the 2nd set taking an early lead 2-0 but Kalinina pulled the break back. She could not confirm it in the next game so Mertens broke her again taking a 4-1 lead in the process. She would add one more before winning the 2nd set 6-1. 

The final set opened with both playing well but soon Mertens started taking over. She took the lead 4-2 after a hard-fought game where she broke Kalinina. That was the final blow for Kalinina who completely faltered after that allowing one more break before Mertens ended the match with 6-2. A strong comeback win for Mertens who has lacked confidence in her play following a string of mixed results.

There were plenty more matches in Linz today and one more to go so if you want to follow that be sure to check out our live scores.

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.@elise_mertens with the drop shot/lob combination! 😲 #WTALinz

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