The withdrawal of Erin Routliffe due to injury robbed the women’s ASB Classic of its biggest drawcard from a New Zealand perspective, leaving Lulu Sun as the main attraction in her first tournament here under the New Zealand flag. The first day of qualifying saw three New Zealanders in action, and all performed well enough to justify their selection.
Monique Barry started by causing the biggest upset possible when she took out the top seed in Ena Shibahara in straight sets, taking the first in a tie-break after they had won two service breaks each. Barry came from 2-4 down to win the second set 6-4, and the result was Barry’s best career win, being the first time that she beat a player ranked inside the top 150.
Elyse Tse, who had gained her wild-card through losing the final of the play-off tournament, lost to another Japanese player in Nao Hibino in straight sets, but it was the third Kiwi who had the crowd on their feet throughout. Valentina Ivanov faced left-handed Spanish player Leyre Romero Gormaz, who is ranked 900 places higher. Multiple service breaks in the first set eventually took them to a tie-break, with Ivanov prevailing.
Romero Gormaz had three set points as she tried to serve out the second set in the tenth game, but Ivanov was able to save them all before breaking back. They went to another tie-break, and this time it was the Spaniard who prevailed. The final set was a topsy-turvy one, with a swapped service break early on before Ivanov grabbed a break point in the ninth game, but she couldn’t convert that chance. That left her serving to stay in the match, but she lost the final two points from 30-30 to end a very entertaining affair after three hours and six minutes.
All of that meant Barry was the only one to progress to the second round. In another really close match she fell in straight sets to Israeli Lina Glushko, who would face loud protests in her main draw match against Naomi Osaka, but the 7-5, 7-6 (4) result still took over two hours. Sun was our only direct entry in the main draw but, seeded fourth, she lost her first round match in three sets to hard-hitting Canadian Rebecca Marino in a contest that was full of errors. Vivian Yang won the wild card play-off the previous week, and faced Jodie Burrage in the first round after the British player got through as a Lucky Loser when second seed Elise Mertens had to withdraw through injury. Yang fought hard, but Burrage always had the upper hand as she went on to win in straight sets.
There were two Kiwi wild card pairs in the doubles, where Valentina Ivanov and Yang lost an entertaining first round match against the American pair of Ann Li and Katie Volynets, but the focus was again on Barry, this time partnering Jade Otway. They split the first two sets against Hibino and Oksana Kalashnikova before running away with the match tie-break.
Their quarter-final was against Jiang Xin-yu and Wu Fang-hsien, and they never got going in the first set. Wu did get taken to a deciding point, as did Barry in her second game, but the second seeds completed a bagel in 22 minutes. Otway lost the opening game in the second set when she finished with consecutive double faults, but she and Barry played far better as the set progressed, the left-hander hitting some fabulous backhand winners before Otway was broken again when serving to stay in the match. Jiang and Wu would go on to win the doubles title, while the singles crown went to Dane Clara Tauson when Osaka retired with an abdominal strain after winning the first set in the final.