American Jessica Pegula from WTA Beijing (tournament category 1000) stopped at the eighth, the fourth favorite had no solutions against the aggressive style, which, as usual, Jelena Ostapenko offers.

Jessica PegulaPhoto: Jean-Francois Badias/AP/Profimedia

Jessica Pegula, without a solution in the match with Jelena Ostapenko

Ranked 17th in the world, Ostapenko realized her tactical score and won in two sets with a score of 6-4, 6-2. The game lasted only one hour and 18 minutes.

Pegula had a poor day’s work, winning just 48.4% of the points with the first and 46.7% with the second. Instead, Ostapenko took advantage of this, the Latvian was aggressive and often decisive in the return.

After this success, Yelena “collected” the score of direct matches, now 3-2 in favor of the American.

In the quarterfinals of the Asian competition, Ostapenko will meet the winner of the match between Lyudmila Samsonova (22 WTA – Russia) and Marta Kostyuk (44 WTA – Ukraine).

Highlights of the WTA Finals in Beijing

Aryna Sabalenko (1) – Jasmin Paolini

Mirra Andreeva – Olena Rybakina (5)

Jessica Pegula (4) – Yelena Ostapenko (13) 4-6, 2-6

Lyudmila Samsonova – Marta Kostyuk

Maria Sakkari (6) – Xinyu Wang

Veronika Kudermetova (16) – Coco Gauf (3)

Angelina Kalinina – Caroline Garcia (9)

Magda Lynette – Iga Svyatek (2)

The China Open is held in Beijing from September 30 to October 8 on hard, is part of the WTA 1000 category and has a total prize pool of $8,127,389.

The competition was last held in 2019 (it was postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic), and then Naomi Osaka became the champion.