Tennis – Siegemund in the quarterfinals after 4:09 hours

Laura Siegemund has reached the quarter-finals of the WTA tournament in Hua Hin (Thailand) after a marathon match. The 36-year-old from Metzingen won the round of 16 after 4 hours and 9 minutes against the number five seed Wang Xiyu from China 7:6 (7:3), 4:6, 7:6 (7:1) and will now face the third seeded Chinese Wang Xinyu or Rebeka Masarova from Spain in the round of the last eight. As the WTA announced, it was the first match at tour level since 2011 that lasted longer than four hours. “It was a really good match,” said the visibly exhausted Siegemund, who had to take a medical time-out when the score was 5:5 in the third set: “We fought hard and I’m happy to have emerged as the winner.”

Siegemund put in a particularly good performance in terms of fighting spirit. On the way to winning the first set, she fended off three set balls. There was no such comeback in the second set after she again lost her first service game. In the deciding set, Siegemund quickly took a 3-0 lead, then let Wang overtake her again before making it to the quarter-finals in the tiebreak. In 2011, the Italian Francesca Schiavone and the Russian Svetlana Kuznetsova played almost half an hour longer than Siegemund and Wang in the round of 16 of the Australian Open. After 4 hours 44 minutes, Schiavone made it to the quarter-finals, where she lost to Caroline Wozniacki. This year, the highest time until the marathon duel in Hua Hin was 3 hours 43 minutes.