‘Chilled’ Swiatek scrapes into Madrid Open last eight

MADRID: Defending champion Iga Swiatek reached her fifth WTA 1000 quarter-final of the season with a 6-0, 6-7 (3/7), 6-4 victory over 13th-seeded Diana Shnaider at the Madrid Open on Tuesday.

After a nationwide blackout cancelled the majority of play at the Caja Magica on Monday, power was restored at the venue on Tuesday morning, with matches commencing at midday. In her first meeting with the Russian left-hander, Swiatek saved 11 of 13 break points en route to a two-hour 34-minute victory that sent her through to a last-eight showdown with Australian Open champion Madison Keys. Asked about the power outage, the 23-year-old Swiatek admitted she enjoyed being off the grid for a few hours. “Honestly, I liked yesterday, I think the whole world was more relaxed kind of, obviously the people who didn´t lose because of this. I had time to rest,” said Swiatek. “It´s good that in Madrid the sun is setting pretty late. As soon as it got down and it was dark, they put the energy back in our area.

“Honestly, I just chilled and used the time not thinking about what I should do. There was no signal so basically no one used their phones. It was nice, I liked it.” On the men´s side, Bulgaria´s Grigor Dimitrov finally completed a 6-4, 7-6 (7/3) win over Britain´s Jacob Fearnley, converting his third match point some 27 hours after his first.

The match was suspended on Monday with 15th seed Dimitrov leading 6-4, 5-4. When play resumed on Tuesday, both players held serve before Dimitrov edged the tie-break. “That shows you how quickly anything can change, in life as well. From one point, you´re serving for the match, from the other you´re about to receive, and then the lights went out,” said Dimitrov, who will face lucky loser Gabriel Diallo in the fourth round. “I always take these type of situations as a learning curve.

“I remember when I was a kid it (blackouts) happened a lot where I grew up. I took it like this, I felt like I had the experience for it. Of course it´s not pleasant for anybody. It took us three hours to get back to the hotel yesterday. You just have to take it for what it is and move on.”