In the second qualifying round of the WTA 500 tournament in Singapore, Germany's Anna-Lena Friedsam beat Finland's Anastasia Kulikova 6:4, 6:3. The tournament is played on hard courts, and the prize money is $1,2 million. Friedsam was seeded fourth and is ranked 260th with 294 points. Kulikova was the eighth seed, ranked 308th with 234 points.
Breaks decided the outcome
Both sets went to Friedsam, the first by two games and the second by three. The match lasted 78 minutes and there were no tiebreaks. Across the two sets, there were nine breaks of serve, six of them by Friedsam.
According to api.tennis, Friedsam converted 6 of 9 break points. Kulikova took all three of her chances, but she had three times fewer opportunities. The difference was largely built on the Finn's serve: she committed 8 double faults, while Friedsam had 2. The German hit 4 aces to her opponent's 2, and won 19 points on first serve to 17. In total, Friedsam scored 63 points, Kulikova 49.
In the first qualifying round, Kulikova defeated Jiaqi Wang 6:4, 7:5. After this match, the head-to-head record became 1:0 in Friedsam's favor.