Susan Bandecchi kept her Roland Garros main-draw hopes alive on the current qualifying day in Paris, surviving a tense three-set battle to beat Dominika Salkova 6-3, 4-6, 7-5 and move into the third round. The 27-year-old, ranked WTA 215, saved two match points before sealing the win with her third match point.
It was the sort of finish that can turn a qualifying campaign. Roland Garros qualifying is the route into the main draw, and Bandecchi now gets another chance to keep going when she faces Viktoria Hruncakova next. Hruncakova, ranked WTA 224, will try to stop a run that already showed how narrow the margins can be on clay.
The result also fits into a busy day for Swiss players in qualifying. Leandro Riedi advanced, while Rémy Bertola was eliminated, leaving Bandecchi as one of the names still standing with a place in the main draw still in play. For a player outside the top 200, a win like this can change the tone of a whole tournament.
Elsewhere in Rabat, Jil Teichmann moved into the quarterfinals of the WTA 250 event after beating Alycia Parks 6-3, 6-4 in the round of 16. Her straight-sets win was cleaner, but Bandecchi’s had more drama, and that matters in qualifying, where one slip can end the week.
Bandecchi’s path now turns to Hruncakova, with a place in the next round and the larger prize of Roland Garros’s main draw still on the line. The pressure only rises from here, and she has already shown she can handle it when it matters most.
For more on the draw, see Chloe Paquet ouvre Roland-Garros qualificatif face à Susan Bandecchi:
