Second-round action at the WTA Berlin Ladies Open continues on Thursday as the Top 5 get their campaigns underway. Three of those women are covered in this article, while Aryna Sabalenka’s match against Daria Kasatkina is in a separate article. Who will reach the quarterfinal?
Rybakina can complete the set against Kudermetova here. She’s beaten her on clay and hard courts in their previous meetings. This will be their first official bout on grass. The Russian has the weaponry to pose a challenge to Rybakina, but she’s been inconsistent all year, and not even a first-round upset win over Liudmila Samsonova is sufficient to convince me she’ll take down the Kazakhstan
Pegula defeated Vekic in their only previous head-to-head match at Wimbledon two years ago. The American has been a Top 10 mainstay for a while, but she is teetering on exiting that elite coterie in the coming months if she cannot string wins together. It is pertinent to note that Pegula missed the entire European clay-court swing because of injury. Known as one of the most durable athletes on tour, it’s frustrating that injuries might jeopardize the 30-year-old’s ambitions of breaking that quarterfinal barrier at a Grand Slam. Still, I favor Pegula’s baseline discipline in overcoming the Croat in this match, but it could go either way.