Quebec’s Leylah Fernandez needed all her spare change to reach the quarter-finals of the W100 tournament in Madrid on Wednesday.
Fernandez, the first seed, defeated Colombian Emiliana Arango (208th) in three sets 4: 6, 6: 2 and 7: 6 (5).
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In the next round, the young Montrealer meets the winner of the duel between Lucia Cortez Llorca (479th) and Arantxa Rus (107th).
However, Fernandez almost played a nasty trick against the strong Arango in the round of 16. In the first set, she quickly broke serve twice to take a 4-1 lead. Then she persevered and took her fourth chance to win the set.
The 20-year-old then hit the gas pedal and forced a final run in just 38 minutes.
Fernandez and Arango didn’t give themselves a chance in the third set. The tiebreaker at the end was particularly close, but the Quebecois never let her competitor take the lead. Fernandez finally triumphed on Spanish clay after 2 hours and 37 minutes.
Before entering this smaller ITF tournament, Fernandez had been a disappointment in the 1000 series competitions in Madrid and Rome. She was eliminated in the first round every time, Mirra Andreeva and Aliaksandra Sasnovich showed her the way out.