Canada's Leylah Annie Fernandez returns the ball to Poland's Iga ÅšwiÄ…tek during a match of the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Tuesday, Feb 21, 2023. Fernandez and American partner Bethanie Mattek-Sands advanced to the women's doubles quarterfinals of the Dubai Tennis Championships with a 3-6, 6-1, 13-11 win over Xu Yifan and Aliaksandra Sasnovich on Wednesday. THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP-Kamran Jebreili
DUBAI CITY, United Arab Emirates – Canada’s Leylah Fernandez and American partner Bethanie Mattek-Sands advanced to the women’s doubles quarterfinals of the Dubai Tennis Championships with a 3-6, 6-1, 13-11 win over Xu Yifan and Aliaksandra Sasnovich on Wednesday.
Fernandez and Mattek-Sands won 76.7 per cent of first-serve points and broke China’s Xu and Belarus’s Sasnovich three times on 10 chances.
Xu and Sasnovich struggled with their opening serve, winning just 47.2 per cent of available points. The pair scored both of their breaks in the first set before the North American partners responded with a dominant second.
Fernandez and Mattek-Sands will face the Russian duo of Liudmila Samsonova and Veronika Kudermetova in semifinal action on Thursday.
Fernandez, who was eliminated from singles competition at the WTA 1000 event with a second-round loss to top-ranked Iga Swiatek on Tuesday, is looking to advance to her second doubles final of the season.
She teamed with Mattek-Sands to reach the final at the ASB Classic in Auckland, New Zealand in January, where they lost to Miyu Kato of Japan and Aldila Sutjiadi of Indonesia.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 22, 2023.
