By Richard Pagliaro | Wednesday, February 9, 2022

Anett Kontaveit continues to raise the roof indoors.

Kontaveit won four of the last five games conquering Sorana Cirstea 6-4, 7-5 in St. Petersburg to extend her indoor winning streak to 17 consecutive matches.

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The second-seeded Estonian, who won three indoor titles last season, including Moscow, broke Cirstea twice in her final three service games of the first set to snatch a one-set lead.

Informed she's on pace to rise to a career-high rank of No. 6 if she wins St. Petersburg, Kontaveit said she's not looking ahead.

"I had no idea, so you just told me some new information today," Kontaveit told the media in St. Petersburg. "I really am trying to handle each match on their own. I don’t think ahead.

"It’s important you cannot think about the final when you’re in the second round. So it's very important to take it match by match and just focus on each opponent I have and on each challenge I have. I think that’s how I approach tournaments and matches."

The 26-year-old Kontaveit beat Cirstea for the sixth time in as many meetings winning 12 of the 13 sets they've played. Kontaveit will face either Olympic gold-medal champion Belinda Bencic or world No. 102 Kaja Juvan for a spot in the St. Petersburg Ladies Trophy semifinals.

Elise Mertens broke three times in the final set outlasting Petra Martic 6-4, 3-6, 6-2.  The eighth-seeded Mertens lifted her level in the final set improving to 3-0 lifetime vs. the 70th-ranked Croatian.

“I started well—she was making some mistakes in the first set, but of course she came back after that,” Mertens said. “So I’m pretty glad that I won the first set—that I could serve it out. She was stepping up her game in the second set. I didn’t really feel like I was playing my best tennis in the second set, but that can happen sometimes.

“But in the third set I felt I was coming back mentally and physically pushing myself a little bit forward and I think that was the key today.”

Mertens will play top-seeded Maria Sakkari for a spot in the final four.

Sakkari swept Russian Ekaterina Alexandrova 6-2, 6-4 to raise her 2022 record to 6-2.

"I had a pretty good level today," Sakkari said. "Hopefully, it can get me far, but I know that in order for me to win the tournament or just go very deep here I will need to, of course, raise my level but I think it was a very good match. And a very good start of raising that level today so I'm very pleased with the way I managed to do that."