The third time was the charm. After two first-round losses in his two main draw appearances at the Mutua Madrid Open, Belarusian Aryna Sabalenka finally managed to tear down the wall this Friday with a resounding victory over Russia’s Vera Zvonareva (6-1 and 6-2 in just over an hour).
Sabalenka, fifth seeded this year and seventh in the WTA ranking, did not give a choice to a 36-year-old player who became number two in the world (now it is 114) and who has 12 titles in her record, two of them on land (Prague in 2008 and Bol in 2003). With three breaks in the first set and two in the second, she settled her second win against this rival (the first was at the US Open in 2018) and is already waiting in the second round for the winner of the clash between the Romanian Begu and another Russian, Kasatkina.