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Elina Svitolina was given relief at the turn of events in her opening round match at the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships on Tuesday.
After a hard fight in the first set that went to a tiebreak, Ons Jabeur had too much wrong with her right arm that caused her to retire from action on the center court at the Dubai Duty-Free Tennis Stadium.
The two met once two years ago where the Tunisian went the distance against Svitolina pushing things to the brink in the third. The Ukrainian went on to step ahead in the late stages to eventually become champion.
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As the two time defending champion of the current tournament, the 24-year-old looked to have the upper hand on Jabeur and get through her opening round having had a bye in the first. She fell short of a final match in Doha and would make sure she held her ground every step of the way.
Jabeur not only won the opportunity to serve but soon found her way to a two-game lead over the World No. 7.
The Ukrainian could not contain he serve after committing a double fault during her service game.
It was a major concern for the 24-year-old as Jabeur had tremendous confidence to stand 3-0 forcing Svitolina to call down coach Andrew Bettles.
He expressed how flat she looked on the court and that she had to move her feet to dig in or find herself falling faster than a rock.
She answered his advice by hold to love despite being far from answering Jabeur’s return that fortunately landed wide.
When she returned to serve, the world No. 56 kept herself calm and composed by defending herself against Svitolina to hold a third straight.
Svitolina was very much under pressure as Jabeur took time away from her during the rally to catch free points. The Ukrainian came out of it with another stronghold that brought the margin to a pair of games.
The Tunisian got risky during the sixth as she tried to add drop shots into her way of ending a rally. After all the good crosscourt pressure that she put on the world number seven, Jabeur saw that the drop shot got her opponent to deuce and that it had to stop.
She went on the defensive to save her serve but it was too late as Svitolina gained the breakpoints necessary to cut her lead down to one.
An opportunity to even the score nearly slipped from her hands as she committed another double fault. Luckily the returns of Jabeur started to widen on court expressing her feeling of nerves with her opponent surging back.
She won her fourth in a row to serve out the match in the tenth where she had two set points but lost them to give Jabeur a chance on the deuce. It soon turned into the longest game of the match spanning seven minutes and three breaks with the Tunisian saving it from ending.
She managed to take the 11th with a hold that put pressure back on Svitolina to respond in kind. Before she could do that, the Tunisian called out the trainer to deal with a problem in her right arm that handed Svitolina leverage.
She had to wait before serving out the set as Jabeur called the trainer out again about her arm taking a medical timeout to deal with it. When play resumed, the Ukrainian fired out a 40-0 lead but saw Jabeur climb back. The sixth seed avoided deuce and clinched the game to send the two of them to a tiebreak.
Jabeur gained a 2-0 lead but lost the next four to Svitolina who was more than determined to make things count.
She contained her composure giving Jabeur very little to get to set point at 6-4 ending 61 minutes.
Jabeur took another moment with the physio but after playing a game on Svitolina’s serve, her own didn’t look great.
The pain became too much for the Tunisian losing the next three games before calling it a match ending 1 hour and 19 minutes.
Despite tremendous adversity against the sixth seed, Jabeur had made her point and would look forward to another match with the Ukrainian in the future.
Svitolina would take her early problems and tweak them to prepare for her match against the winner between Garbine Muguruza and Saisai Zheng.
