Russian world No.62 Margarita Gasparyan was within reach of the third round at Wimbledon, but an awkward landing on serve in the 11th game of the second set handed Elina Svitolina a retirement victory.
Eighth seed Elina Svitolina seemed to be losing a tightly-contested second-round match, as Gasparyan, who had won their recent grass-court meeting in Birmingham two weeks ago, was just two points from victory at 5-4 in the second set. The higher-ranked Svitolina dug deep to stay alive and level to 5-5.
Soon afterwards, Gasparyan’s extremely bad luck kicked in, as the 24-year-old injured her leg while serving and the pain was so intense that she stayed on Court No.3 only for a short while, retiring from the match in tears at 5-7 6-5.
Elina Svitolina is a good egg. It’s not mentioned often enough.
Really terrible luck for injury-prone Margarita Gasparyan. #Wimbledon pic.twitter.com/MJB1xF8BsR
— René Denfeld (@Renestance) July 3, 2019
It’s such a pity for Gasparyan, who had outplayed Svitolina before the incident, firing 42 winners to her opponent’s 15.
Next up for Svitolina is Greece’s seed No.31 Maria Sakkari, who advanced to the third round with a 6-4 6-1 win over Czech Marie Bouzkova.
