Irina-Camelia Begu of Romania, the third seed, dismissed Lara Arruabarrena of Spain (ranked 86) in straight sets: 6-3, 6-2. Begu had seven aces, won 34% of her service points, and did not face any breakpoints in the match. The players had met twice previously with the Spaniard winning at Basted in 2014 and the Romanian winning at Marseille in 2011. Begu holds two WTA titles: the Korean Open in 2015 and the Tashkent Open in 2012,
The seventh seed, Zarina Diyas of Kazakhstan (ranked 52), defeated qualifier Kai-Lin Zhang of China in two close sets: 6-4, 7-6. Diyas had a first serve percentage of 81 and converted four of six breakpoint opportunities to win the match.
American Alison Riske (ranked 97) upended 8th seed Annika Beck of Germany (ranked 58) in three sets at the Shenzhen Open: 6-7, 6-3, 6-2. After two close sets, the American was able to win 76% of her service points and 57% of her return points in the third set to take the match. Riske has one WTA title to her credit, the Tianjin Open In 2014. The American will face Su-Wei Hsieh in the next round.
Timea Babos of Hungary (ranked 70) defeated Evgeniya Rodina of Russia (ranked 87) in straight sets in their first meeting: 6-3, 6-2. Babos served up nine aces and won 78% of her first service points to take the match in just over an hour. Recently the 22-year-old Hungarian won her second WTA title in the OEC Taipei WTA Challenger in November 2015, her first title was at Monterrey in 2012. Babos reached the Wimbledon mixed doubles final (with partner Alexander Peya) in 2015 and the ladies doubles finals (with partner Kristina Mladenovic) at Wimbledon in 2014 as well.
Su-Wei Hsieh of Chinese Taipei (ranked 93) bested Wildcard Ying-Ying Duan of China (ranked 118) in straight sets as well: 6-4, 7-5. Hsieh also was victorious over Duan in this tournament last year. Hsieh now holds a 4-0 record head-to-head with Duan with out dropping a set. Although Duan had nine aces in the match, she also had nine double faults. In addition, Hsieh was able to take advantage of Duan’s second serve, winning 61% of those points. Hsieh has won many doubles titles (including two Grand Slam titles) with former partner Peng Shuai. In 2012, Hsieh won two WTA singles titles: the Malaysian Open and the Guangzhou International Women’s Open. Hsieh is the highest-ranked Taiwanese women’s singles player ever.
Also advancing are Anna-Lena Friedsam of Germany (ranked 95) who beat Bojana Jovanovski of Serbia (ranked 79): 6-0, 6-3, and Katerina Siniakova (ranked 102) of the Czech Republic who defeated Andreea Mitu of Romania (ranked 96): 6-3, 6-3.
Agnieszka Radwanska, Petra Kvitova, and Eugenie Bouchard are scheduled to play on Tuesday.
