Tight loss for Lulu Sun against Marta Kostyuk in Cincinnati

Lulu Sun has once again come close to defeating Marta Kostyuk from Ukraine, but couldn’t quite get across the line. 

At the WTA Cincinnati 1000 tournament on Wednesday (Thursday NZ time) Sun lost 6-3 7-5 to Kostyuk, the world No 21.

This follows their clash at the recent Paris Olympics, where Kostyuk won 6-4 6-3 and just like last time there was little between the two players.

Unusually for Sun, she couldn’t dominate with her serve as much as she usually does and wasn’t able to serve any aces, while winning 54% of the points when she got her first serve in.

However, the 23-year-old stayed in the fight and was prepared to battle her way through the points, looking to move her opponent when she had a short ball.

Sun went down a break midway through the first set, which she wasn’t able to get back.

In the second set Sun had three set points when Kostyuk was serving at 4-5, but the Ukrainian was able to save all of them, doing this on the second one with a huge ace down the middle of the court.

Then in the following game Sun was broken to put Kostyuk into a position to serve for the match.

But the Kiwi wouldn’t go down fighting and got up 15-40 to have two more break points. However, once more the Ukrainian was able to come through in the big moments, winning the next three points, for a match point.

On it, Kostyuk put a volley into the net, but soon after she bagged the crucial point she needed to advance to the next round.

Sun battled through qualifying to make it to the second round of the main draw in Cincinnati and despite this loss, she is expected to move from 64 to around 58 when the world rankings are next released.

Meanwhile, Michael Venus has made it through the second round of the doubles in Cincinnati.

He and Neal Skupski defeated Julian Cash from Britain and America’s Robert Galloway 6-3 6-7(4) 12-10, with Skupski putting away the match point after a close exchange with all four players at the net. 

In the next round Venus and Britain’s Skupski will play against Santiago Gonzalez from Mexico and the Frenchman Edouard Roger-Vasselin.