Kostyuk Advances to Guadalajara Quarters Without Playing

Marta Kostyuk is into the quarter-finals of the Guadalajara Open without having hit a single ball in anger.

The top seed in Mexico, world number 10 Kostyuk skipped the first round with a bye, then advanced again on Wednesday when Taylor Townsend withdrew from their second-round clash because of illness. Two rounds, no points played, and the Ukrainian suddenly finds herself deep in the draw.

The free passage ends now.

Kostyuk is scheduled to finally launch her campaign against eighth seed Liudmila Samsonova, who survived a draining three-set scrap to get there. The Russian edged past Kayla Day 7-6 (7-4) 2-6 7-6 (7-5), a match that swung wildly before Samsonova held her nerve in both tiebreaks.

Kostyuk arrives in Guadalajara as one of the form players of the season. She captured her first WTA 1000 title in Madrid in May, a breakthrough that underlined her rise into the game’s elite. She then backed it up with deep runs at the majors, reaching the semi-finals at both the French Open and Wimbledon.

Her most recent Grand Slam outing ended in the last 16 of the US Open, where sixth seed Linda Noskova halted her progress. Even so, the body of work across 2024 has pushed the 24-year-old firmly into the conversation at every big event she enters.

Now comes a different kind of test: stepping cold into a quarter-final, against a battle-hardened opponent who has already felt the court, the bounce, the altitude. Kostyuk’s racquet has been idle so far in Guadalajara.

That’s about to change.