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E-mail Xinhua, January 2, 2025
China's Yuan Yue beat ninth seed Marta Kostyuk on Wednesday night to advance to the third round of the Brisbane International tennis tournament.
Yuan beat Kostyuk, the world number 18, 6-4, 6-3 in their second round match at the key Australian Open warm-up event.
The Chinese world number 49 won 65.5 percent of points on her own serve, compared to Kostyuk's 54.8 percent, despite making fewer first serves than the Ukrainian.
"I'm very excited to win this match, my first of 2025," Yuan said on court following the victory.
She said that the large contingent of Chinese fans in the crowd supporting her gave her the energy to win the match.
Yuan will play another Ukrainian, Anhelina Kalinina, in the round of 16 on Thursday afternoon local time.
On center court in Wednesday's afternoon session, men's second seed and reigning champion Grigor Dimitrov beat Australia's Aleksandar Vukic 6-2 7-6 to advance to the quarterfinals.
It marks the eighth time in nine appearances at the tournament that Dimitrov has reached the quarterfinals.
The second seed in the women's draw, Emma Navarro, is out of the tournament after being beaten by local hope Kimberly Birrell 7-5, 7-5 in a major upset.
It was Birrell's second career win over a top-10 ranked opponent and first since 2019.
The top seeds in the men's and women's singles draws, Novak Djokovic and Aryna Sabalenka, will be in action on center court on Thursday night against Gael Monfils and 15th seed Yulia Putintseva, respectively.
Djokovic and Australia's Nick Kyrgios were knocked out of the doubles draw on Wednesday by top seeds Nikola Mektic and Michael Venus.
