Liguori: Another Qualifier In Women's Draw Pulls Off An Upset
By Ann Liguori
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"Qualifiers" are gaining additional notoriety in the women's draw.
Both the No. 2 and No. 3 seeds in the women's draw were knocked out by qualifiers.
The latest stunner: qualifier Aleksandra Krunic, a 21-year-old from Serbia, surprised third seed and Wimbledon champion Petra Kvitova, 6-4, 6-4 in their third round match. Kvitova's 34 unforced errors, including six double faults, didn't help.
Krunic, ranked 145, ousted 27th ranked Madison Keys in the second round on Thursday-- her first win over a Top 30 player. Then, on Saturday morning, she knocked Kvitova out early. And what a feat against one of the top players in the world! Kvitova was fresh off her hard court win in New Haven after winning her second Wimbledon title.
"I didn't expect that everyone would be cheering for me," Krunic told Mary Jo Fernandez on CBS Sports after the match. "It was an honor to be on the same court as Petra. I watched both of her finals' matches at Wimbledon…I didn't expect to win…I was hoping to win a set and somehow I managed to win the match!"
On Friday, qualifier Mirjana Lucic-Baroni, at 32 years of age to boot, ousted second seed Simona Halep in another big upset in the women's draw.
You may remember Lucic playing at the U.S. Open when she was a young prodigy with a difficult childhood, which included an abusive father. In 1998, she and her doubles partner, Martina Hingis, won the Australian Open Women's Doubles title. Fast forward all these years later and she advanced to the fourth round at the U.S. Open for the first time since 1999 as a 32-year-old qualifier.
Earlier, 11th seed Flavia Pennatta disposed of American Nicole Gibbs, 6-4, 6-0.
2011 U.S. Open winner and top seed Novak Djokovic had no problem against Sam Querrey 6-3, 6-2, 6-2.
That leaves 13th seed John Isner the last standing American man in the draw, at least for the moment. He has a third round match-up on the Armstrong Stadium Court against 22 seed Philipp Kohlschreiber of Germany. That match will be after the Andy Murray-Andrew Kuznetsov match. Isner has beaten Kohlschreiber four of the six times they've played. The 29-year-old is the highest-ranked American in the men's draw. His serve up to this point has yet to be broken.
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