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No. 4 seed Jasmine Paolini got crushed in the Doha round-of-16, while sixth-seeded Jessica Pegula enjoyed a good day at the office and progressed into the quarterfinal.
The Italian, who made two Grand Slam finals last year, stood no chance against Jelena Ostapenko after the world No. 37 registered a dominant 6-2 6-2 win.
For a place in the Doha semifinal, the Latvian will play against the winner of the match between Ons Jabeur and Sofia Kenin.
Meanwhile, Pegula overcame 10th-seeded Daria Kasatkina 6-3 7-5.
In her next Qatar Open match, the sixth-seeded American will meet Ekaterina Alexandrova or Elise Mertens.
How Ostapenko, Pegula won?
After saving two break points in the second game of the match, the Latvian claimed back-to-back breaks and won a total of five games in a row to go 5-1 up, before serving out for the first set in the eighth game.
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Down by a set, Paolini showed some signs of life after taking the opening two games of the second set.
However, it didn't take long before Ostapenko regained full control of the match, going on another big run and winning the next six games in a row to overturn an early second-set deficit and to complete a two-set win.
In the past, the Latvian finished as Doha runner-up in her 2016 debut and she was also a semifinalist at the tournament in 2022.
"I feel very special playing in Doha, because I feel this is the place where everything started for me," Ostapenko said in her on-court interview.
In the Pegula and Kasatkina match, the American won the first set after earning breaks in the fifth and ninth games and she also opened an early 3-1 lead in the second set.
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Down by a set and two breaks, Kasatkina responded by winning the next four games to go 5-3 up.
But Pegula didn't allow the Russian to take the match into a decider as the American went on a four-game run of her own to get the job done in two sets.
