Swiatek demolishes Linette to reach China Open quarter-finals

Swiatek faces Ukraine’s Anhelina Kalinina or the ninth seed Caroline Garcia of France next.

Iga Swiatek of Poland returns a shot to her compatriot Magda Linette during the 3rd round of the women’s singles match in the China Open tennis tournament at the Lotus Court in Beijing, Wednesday, Oct. 4, 2023. | Photo Credit: AP

World number two Iga Swiatek swatted aside compatriot Magda Linette to surge into the China Open quarter-finals with a 6-1, 6-1 victory in Beijing on Wednesday.

Swiatek raced into a 5-0 lead in the first set and snuffed out any hope of an unlikely comeback when she forced her fellow Pole to fire a forehand long.

The four-time Grand Slam champion then presided over a second-set masterclass, blitzing an exhausted Linette with an unrelenting salvo of mighty groundstrokes to wrap up the match in just over an hour.

Swiatek faces Ukraine’s Anhelina Kalinina or the ninth seed Caroline Garcia of France next.

World number four Jessica Pegula crashed out with a 6-4, 6-2 defeat to Latvia’s Jelena Ostapenko.

Ostapenko faces Liudmila Samsonova in the last eight after the Russian defeated Ukraine’s Marta Kostyuk 6-4, 6-7 (4/7), 7-5 in a match that took nearly three hours.