Estonian tennis player Ingrid Neel reaches Tokyo quarterfinals
Estonian-American tennis player Ingrid Neel and her Mexican partner Giuliana Olmos opened the WTA tournament in Tokyo with a win and are through to the quarterfinals.
Neel and Olmos beat Shuko Aoyama of Japan and En Shuo Liang of Taiwan 4:6, 6:4, 10:8 in the first round of the women's doubles. In the deciding set they came back from 1:5 down, winning four points in a row from 3:6 and holding firm at the decisive moments.
In the quarterfinals they face Tereza Mihalikova (Slovakia) and Olivia Nicholls (Great Britain), who eliminated the third-seeded pair Erin Routliffe (New Zealand) and Aldila Sutjiadi (Indonesia) 6:2, 6:3.
Tokyo is hosting a WTA 500 singles event, where the top seed is world number one Elena Rybakina of Kazakhstan. Rybakina, who recently won the equivalent-level tournament in China, had a first-round bye and next faces her compatriot, Yulia Putintseva.
Two of the four top seeds withdrew at the last moment — Poland's Maja Chwalinska and Switzerland's Belinda Bencic are not taking part. Diana Shnaider, Elise Mertens and home crowd favorite Naomi Osaka are however still in the Tokyo competition.
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Editor: Andrew Whyte, Siim Boikov
