Korea Open: Baptiste downs Stephens to reach second round

Hailey Baptiste advanced to the second round of the Korea Open by beating Sloane Stephens 7-6 (4), 6-2 at the Olympic Park Tennis Center in Seoul on Tuesday.

Baptiste had an unpleasant start to the all-American clash as Stephens broke her in the match’s first game. However, the former converted a break point later to force a tiebreaker, where she secured five mini breaks to take the lead.

The second set panned out differently, with former US Open champion Stephens losing her serve twice as Baptiste completed the win in less than 100 minutes.

Baptiste, ranked No 105, will face top seed Daria Kasatkina next.

Seoul WTA 500, other first-round results (Olympic Park Tennis Center, hard, USD 922.573, most recent results first):

• Ajla Tomljanovic vs. Su Jeong Jang
• Peyton Stearns vs. Emma Raducanu
• Tatjana Maria vs. Viktoriya Tomova
• Amanda Anisimova beat Yulia Putintseva (6): 6-3, 7-6 (5)
• Polina Kudermetova (LL) beat Priscilla Hon (Q): 7-5, 6-4
• Marta Kostyuk (5) beat Arantxa Rus: 6-3, 6-1
• Ekaterina Alexandrova (7) beat Varvara Lepchenko (Q): 7-5, 3-6, 6-0
• Carol Zhao (Q) beat Dayeon Back (WC): 6-4, 6-1
• Heather Watson (Q) beat Jia-Jing Lu (Q): 6-4, 6-4
• Veronika Kudermetova beat Shuai Zhang: 6-4, 6-3
• Yue Yuan (8) beat Elena-Gabriela Ruse (Q): 4-6, 6-2, 6-2

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