Barty holds off Alexandrova to set up AO round of 16 clash with Rogers

World No. 1 Ashleigh Barty was in trouble early on in both sets but bounced back each time, moving past Ekaterina Alexandrova, 6-2, 6-4, and into the fourth round of the Australian Open on Saturday night.

Alexandrova had been one of the players to watch coming in, scoring wins over both Simona Halep and Iga Swiatek en route to the semifinals of the Gippsland Trophy last week. She also won her first two rounds here in straight sets, and jumped out to an early 2-0 lead against Barty.

But Barty cut down on her unforced errors, started to extend the rallies and would win the next seven games in a row for a 6-2, 1-0 lead, seemingly headed for a routine straight-sets victory.

Alexandrova didn’t go down easily. The No. 29-seeded Russian stayed on serve for the next few games then broke Barty for 3-2, and then held for 4-2. But Barty had one last run of her own, winning the last four games to close it out after an hour and 20 minutes on Margaret Court Arena.

“It took me some time to get used to her ball, having never played her before,” Barty said. “So there was an adjustment period tonight, but I’m happy I was able to bring her back on my terms.”

The Australian has now reached the second week at the last seven Grand Slams she’s played.

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Awaiting her in the fourth round will be Shelby Rogers, who looked down and out at 1-4 in the first set of her third-round match against No. 21 seed Anett Kontaveit. But from there, she won five games in a row to take the opening set, then broke early in the second and never let it go to prevail, 6-4, 6-3.

What caused the sudden turnaround? “To be honest, just bringing in the margins a little bit,” Rogers said. “It’s a big court and you have a lot of space out here, and I was just this far off in the first set in the beginning. I felt like I was hitting clean and going for the right shots, but I just had to adjust my targets, try to move forward and stay aggressive. And I made a few more first serves, which helped.”

Her celebration was a little muted, as there was no crowd on Rod Laver Arena. Saturday marked the first day of a five-day lockdown in the region due to a COVID-19 outbreak, with no fans allowed.

“I’m missing the fans a little extra tonight, so that’s bittersweet, but everybody stay safe,” Rogers said.

“Hopefully it was a good show on TV!”

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The American is through to the second week of a major for the third time in her career. The first two times she got this far she also made the quarterfinals, at the 2016 French Open and 2020 US Open.

Barty leads their head-to-head, 2-0, winning in the first round of the 2017 Australian Open, 7-5, 6-1, and in the quarterfinals of one of the lead-up events last week in a match tie-break, 7-5, 2-6, 10-4.

“I’ll be excited not to play a third set tie-breaker here, because she kicked my butt in it last time! And we won’t have a Barty Party in the stands, so I guess that’s better for me too,” Rogers joked.

“But she’s on fire. She’s playing free. She’s such a talented girl. I’ll have to bring my best game.”