Svitolina defeated Blinkova once again to advance to the 1/8 final at Roland Garros 2023.

Former third racket in the world and former leader of Ukrainian women’s tennis Elina Svitolina (WTA 192) reached the 1/8 final of the French Open 2023.

In the third round of Roland Garros, the Ukrainian player defeated the country representative 404 in three sets. Anna Blinkova (WTA 56) at 2 hours and 15 minutes.

Roland Garros 2023. 1/16 final

Anna Blinkova- Elina Svitolina (Ukraine) – 6:2, 2:6, 5:7

Elina obviously failed to start the match. Blinkova played aggressively, accurately and dominated the field. Anna determined the course of the match and won the first set of the game.

Before the start of the second installment, the Ukrainian athlete took a medical break. His wife, Gael Monfils, was very suspicious of Elina in the first set, but the Ukrainian player was not injured. Svitolina’s eyes were dripping, the runny nose that made her eyes tear up had apparently not gone away. In the second set we saw a completely different tennis from Elina. But Blinkova also passed. Anna made mistakes, and Svitolina began to score more often. The result is 6:2.

Getty Images/Global Images Ukraine. Elina Svitolina

The third set started tensely. Although Svitolina had a breaking point in the first game, she did not take a break, but then calmly took her serve. Elina took the third game and soon took a 3:1 (40:30) lead on Blinkova’s serve. But to secure a victory, a second timeout and being almost ahead of schedule didn’t work. Blinkova is back in the game, celebrating Elina’s mistakes with camons in her favorite style, and soon took a 4:3 lead.

Elina had to serve to stay in the game. He did this even though the score was 40:40 on his serve in the 8th game. In the 9th game, Elina got an important break. At 4:5, the Ukrainian came out to serve the match, but could not cope with this task. However, in the 11th match, Svitolina again took a break and went to the service for the second time. Game 12 was very tense, but not because of Blinkova’s quality tennis, but because of several mistakes Svitolina made in a row. However, from the third match point, we managed to close the match behind us. The result of the third game – 7:5!

It was the second meeting of tennis players. A week ago, Elina defeated Anna in the final of the WTA 250 tournament in Strasbourg.

In the next round of the French Major, Svitolina will face another Russian, Daria Kasatkina.