Garbine Muguruza wins late Dubai duel at 2 am in the morning!

Elina Svitolina of Ukraine returns the ball to Chinas Wang Qiang unseen during their match on the second day of the WTA Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championship at the Dubai Tennis Stadium on February 21 2018 PicAFPDefending champion and top seed Elina Svitolina toiled for more than two hours to reach the Dubai quarterfinals while second seed Garbine Muguruza had to wait until 2 am to complete her opening victoryPlay ran exceptionally late at the event with lengthy slowmoving matches to blame Svitolina took two and a quarter hours to overcome stubborn resistance from Chinas Wang Qiang 61 57 62 Muguruza the runnerup in Qatar last weekend had to wait out a threehour epic as Daria Kasatkina beat British seventh seed Johanna Konta 46 76 86 62 before the Spanish second seed got on court in the early hours of ThursdayBut Muguruza at least then picked up the pace to defeat American CiCi Bellis 63 75 a match which took one and threequarter hours and ended just before 2 amSvitolina had to save nine of 11 break points against world number 46 Wang who entered the field after the withdrawal of Petra Kvitova the Qatar champion I was a little bit angry at myself that I didnt bring my best game in the end of the second set I had to accept and bounce back Svitolina said But I was very happy the way I was playing In the end the win is the win Konta the first ever British woman to win a round in Dubai was unable to get past Russian KasatkinaI can only really look back on this match and take the good things I did do a lot of good things and I can then learn from the things and try to do better Konta said Karolina Pliskova and Angelique Kerber advanced to set up a battle of exworld number ones in the last eightCzech Pliskova the third seed beat Carla Suarez Navarro 57 62 64 while Germanys Kerber dispatched Italian qualifier Sara Errani 64 62 Sixth seed Kerber who won the Sydney title in January before reaching the Australian Open semifinals leads the series with her Czech opponent 63 winning their last two matches It was a tricky match especially because she was playing well Kerber said after taking the win over Errani on a secondary showcourt at the Aviation ClubI dont care which court I play on Its always important now to win the matches and focus more on my opponent on my game on the next round Japans Naomi Osaka the next opponent for Svitolina beat Anett Kontaveit of Estonia 62 76 75 while French fifth seed Caroline Garcia put out Ekaterina Makarova 64 62Catch up on all the latest sports news and updates here Also download the new midday Android and iOS apps to get latest updatesThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever