Alongside the final settlements of Wimbledon Championships, there is also some other action in WTA this week, as two WTA 125 challengers are being played in the second week of London's Grand Slam.
Tennis fans in Sweden can celebrate a great fortnight in Bastad, which started this week with the WTA 125 Nordea Open and is about to be continued next week with the on-court action presented by men, who will compete in the ATP tournament. The line-up of Swedish tournament was really impressive from the start, as all the seeded players are ranked in the top 100 of the official WTA list.
Emma Navarro headlines the main draw as a top seed and the American is doing well as one of the favourites, as she already reach out the quarterfinals. Navarro started her campaign in Sweden with a routine win over Polina Kudermetova. The next stop was more challenging for the world's number 55, as she needed to face Mirjam Bjorklund. The local crowd's favorite started the match from the front foot while leading in the opening set, but Navarro managed to force the tiebreak, where she won 7-2. Bjorklund has not discouraged herself and played with more consistency in second set, moving the match into decider with a dominant 6-1 win. That was the end of a good performance of the home representative, as the roles have switched over in deciding set, where Navarro was a dominant force from the start and secured the spot in quarters with a score 7-6(2) 1-6 6-1. Tamara Zidansek will be Navarro's opponent in QF after eliminating the 5th seed Panna Udvardy with a crushing score 6-2 6-1.
Louisa Chirico and Claire Liu set up the all-American QFs clash. Chirico, listed 251th in WTA rankings, has advanced into main draw from the qualies and performed a notable upset on the highest ranked Swede - Rebecca Peterson. Chirico was rated with a pre-match odd 2.97, but eliminated the favorite who played on her home soil, winning by 7-6(4) 5-7 6-1 after more than 2,5 hours of battle. Liu advanced into quarters after two confident wins against the lower ranked opponents.
Olga Danilovic comes back to the surface, where she celebrated a great run of form in May, including the victory in WTA 125 event in Madrid and successful campaign in Roland Garros, where the Serbian advanced into 3rd round of main draw as a qualifier. The grass season was not so successful for Danilovic, but she came back on track in Bastad while advancing into quarters. Danilovic has shockingly lost the opening set of her first round's match against Reka Luca Jani with a score 0-6, but turned the match over to win 0-6 6-3 6-0 eventually, being unbeatable at the end of the match despite the horrible start. Danilovic earned another bagel in second round's match against local player Nellie Taraba Wallberg, winning by 6-0 6-2 in just 53 minutes.
Viktoriya Tomova sets up an interesting match-up with Danilovic, which is the only one clash between two top 100 players in the quarterfinals. The Bulgarian has played a super interesting match against Chloe Paquet in second round. The Bulgarian prevailed in an enormous opening set, which took 99 minutes (!) and got ended up after a long and intense tiebreak with a score 14-12. Tomova has converted her 9th setpoint, while her opponent had also two chances to take this set on her account. Tomova took the wind in her sails, quickly running away with the score after start of second set. Despite being 1-4 down with double break gap, Pacquet managed to come back level, but the Bulgarian regained the advantage in decisive games to secure the QFs spot with a score 7-6(12) 6-4.
Yulia Putintseva is another big name in the draw of Nordea Open. The second seed has easily advanced into quarters. Putintseva defeated the local player Lisa Zaar with a score 6-3 6-4 in opening round and was about to play the hit clash of second round against Katie Volynets. Unfortunately, the American was playing with an injury and needed to pull out after losing 7 games in a row, which gave an easy advance into quarters for the Kazakh, who will play there against Aliona Bolsova Zadoinov.
