Iga Swiatek comfortably beats Elina Svitolina to reach Dubai Championships quarter-finals, Coco Gauff survives scare

Iga Swiatek cruised into the last eight of the Dubai Championships with a routine 6-1 6-4 victory over Elina Svitolina.

The world No. 1 extended her unbeaten run against the WTA’s top 20 players to 13 matches, and the Pole looked comfortable throughout against her Ukrainian opponent, who has won this event twice before, coming through in an hour and 24 minutes.

Svitolina had won the most recent encounter between the two, as the Ukrainian shocked Swiatek in the last eight en route to the Wimbledon final last year, but Swiatek showed her quality to advance into the quarter-finals of yet another tournament.

“I felt like she played better in the second set,” Swiatek said afterwards. “It wasn’t that easy to just finish points and win points.

“I wanted to stay focused and proactive and kind of make decisions but not too risky. I felt like we were both good in the longer rallies, so I needed to really push in the right time to make pressure. I think decision making and placement was the most important thing.”

The Pole will play the sixth seed Zheng Qinwen, who defeated Anastasia Potapova 6-3 6-2, in the last eight.

Coco Gauff survived a first set hiccup to overcome Karolina Pliskova 2-6 6-4 6-3.

The no. 3 seed claimed victory in just under two hours as she halted her Czech opponent’s 11-match unbeaten run to eke ahead 2-1 in the pair’s head-to-head.

Pliskova, who won her first title since 2020 at Cluj-Napoca, reached the semi-finals in Doha but was forced to withdraw from her encounter against Swiatek with injury, and has rocketed up the rankings, moving from world No. 78 to 36.

Gauff, the reigning US Open champion, however, threw the form book out of the window, powering her way to victory after an initial blip in the first set, and the American will face unseeded Anna Kalinskaya in the next round, after the Russian surprised Jelena Ostapenko, the ninth seed, 6-4 7-5.

Fourth seed Elena Rybakina also had to deal with a dropped set as she went the distance with Magdalena Frech, coming out 7-6(5) 3-6 6-4 victor.

The Kazakh, who was defeated by Swiatek in the Qatar final last week, was on court for two hours and 39 minutes in a marathon encounter that swung both ways, and Rybakina had to dig deep in the latter stages of the opening set, coming back from 5-3 down to force a tiebreak, which she won.

She will face Jasmine Paolini, the unseeded Italian, in the last eight, after Paolini beat the out-of-form Maria Sakkari, the eighth seed in Dubai, in straight sets.