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Petra Kvitova erased a pair of match points and converted her fourth to edge Garbiñe Muguruza 5-7, 6-3, 7-6 (10) on Saturday in a showdown between two-time major champions.
Kvitova just kept coming back — after dropping the first set, after trailing 5-2 in the third and after being a point from defeat twice at 6-5 — to advance to the fourth round of the US Open. No. 21 Kvitova on Monday will face No. 8 Jessica Pegula, who defeated qualifier Yuan Yue 6-2, 6-7 (6), 6-0, for a berth in the quarterfinals.
Here’s how close this one was: Kvitova won 109 total points, Muguruza 108.
It took the new format final-set tiebreaker to determine the winner. The four Grand Slam tournaments agreed to adopt a uniform system this year, with the third sets of women’s matches and fifth sets of men’s decided by a first-to-10, win-by-two formula; the US Open used to have the more traditional first-to-seven setup.
Kvitova, a left-hander who won Wimbledon in 2011 and 2014, overcame 12 double-faults with 14 aces and 50 total winners. She improved to 6-1 against No. 9 seed Muguruza, the champion at the French Open in 2016 and Wimbledon in 2017.