Svetlana Kuznetsova claimed her first win since late August at the 2017 US Open with a straight-sets victory over Wang Qiang at the WTA Istanbul Cup.
It snapped a six-match losing streak for the Russian, who was forced to undergo wrist surgery in November 2017 and miss the Australian Open.
Kuznetsova’s 6-3 6-3 win over China’s Wang sets up a second-round meeting with a qualifier – either Viktoriya Tomova or Valentyna Ivakhnenko – at the claycourt event.
.@SvetlanaK27 is first into @Istanbul_Cup second round!
Defeats Wang Qiang 6-3, 6-3! pic.twitter.com/TpJrQq7ld2
— WTA (@WTA) April 23, 2018
“You can practise as much as you want, but nothing gets you better prepared like playing matches,” Kuznetsova told wtatennis.com.
“I’ve been practising a lot, but still when I came to the tour, I was not quite ready. I played Indian Wells but I felt like I was out of shape. Phyiscally, I was good, because I had trained, but I needed more matches.”
Kuznetsova lost her comeback match in Indian Wells as well as her opening matches in Miami and Lugano before breaking the drought in Istanbul.
Highly-rated 15-year-old Marta Kostyuk took another step in her rapid tennis development, stunning Alize Cornet to reach the main draw at the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix.
Kostyuk’s 4-6 6-2 6-3 win over the world No.35 was her third qualifying victory in Stuttgart and follows a few months on from her third-round run at the Australian Open, where she was also a qualifier.
.@marta_kostyuk is the youngest player to compete in main draw @PorscheTennis since 1995 – Martina Hingis (15 yrs, 15 days) and Marlene Weingartner (15 years, 259 days).
— WTA Insider (@WTA_insider) April 23, 2018
She lines up against German wildcard Antonia Lottner in the first round of the main draw.
In the one main-draw result on Sunday, Magdalena Rybarikova stunned in-form Russian Daria Kasatkina 6-2 6-2.
Rising Greek star Stefanos Tsitsipas scored his fourth win in his last five matches on clay with a 6-4 6-1 demolition of French qualifier Corentin Moutet in Barcelona.
Tsitsipas, who qualified last week in Monte Carlo and advanced to the second round, will now take on No.7 seed Diego Schwartzman.
Also winning through to the second round of the ATP 500 event were Ivo Karlovic, Benoit Paire, Pablo Cuevas and Leonardo Mayer.
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