Eighth seed Belinda Bencic and 15th seed Victoria Azarenka of Belarus became the latest seeds to crash out of the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championship on Wednesday. Ninth seed Elena Rybakova withdrew from the tournament after failing to recover from a back injury.

Azarenka was troubled by an ankle injury that severely restricted her movement, and the World No. 14 lost to Madison Keys of the United States 6-2, 6-1 on Wednesday. Despite the ankle injury, Azarenka fought bravely, but Keys was quick to capitalise on her limited movement with some drop shots and crosscourt winners.

Bencic's fall

Bencic, the Mubadala Abu Dhabi Open winner, was humbled by Czech Karolina Muchova, who won 6-1, 6-4. The Swiss had pulled out of the Qatar Open last week after winning her quarterfinal, complaining of exhaustion.

In other matches, third seed Jessica Pegula of the United States and Karolina Pliskova of the Czech Republic entered the last eight. Pegula despatched Romania’s Ana Bogdan 6-4, 6-3, while Pliskova overcame the challenge of Ukraine’s Anhelina Kalinina 7-5, 6-7 (6), 6-2.

Pegula will clash with Muchova, and Pliskova, the World No. 18, play top seed Iga Swiatek of Poland. Swiatek lived up to the billing with another demolition act. She trounced Liudmila Samsonova of Russia 6-1, 6-0 with razor-sharp groundstrokes.

Swiatek dominance continues

Swiatek has been so dominant that she has lost only eight games in her last 10 sets over five matches, which she attributed to her renewed focus after the exit from the Australian Open. “I’m trying to play solid and focused on every point and not take anything for granted. Maybe that’s working,” the World No. 1 said.

“I realised in Australia that my mindset wasn’t really great, and I was feeling stressed. I’m happy that I could start from the beginning with a clean page. I really worked hard to play a solid game from the baseline. I am happy it had an effect,” the Pole added

In a major upset in doubles, top seeds Pegula and Gauff crashed to a 1-6, 3-6 defeat to the Taipei pair of Latisha Chan and Chan Hao-ching.

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