Eastbourne (England) – After starting the season on grass with a doubles title in Berlin, Luísa Stefani stopped in the quarter-finals of the WTA 500 in Eastbourne. The Brazilian played alongside China’s Zhaoxuan Yang this week and even moved up a lap. The executioners this Thursday were the Australian Ellen Perez and the American Nicole Melichar-Martinez by 6/3 and 7/6 (7-4).

Stefani heads to Wimbledon, which starts on Monday, and resumes her partnership with Frenchwoman Caroline Garcia. They couldn’t play together this week, as Garcia only played singles. The 30-year-old Frenchwoman is currently number 5 in the world. Yang, meanwhile, only plays doubles and is ranked 22nd in the modality.

The second-best Brazilian in the doubles specialist ranking, Stefani is currently in 14th place. The 25-year-old from São Paulo will make her second appearance in the Wimbledon bracket. In 2021, he fell again in the second round. She missed the London Grand Slam last year while still recovering from injury and knee surgery.

Executioners of Stefani and Yang in the quarter-finals, Perez and Melichar are the 2 seeds in Eastbourne and face in the semi-finals the Latvian Jelena Ostapenko and the Ukrainian Lyudmyla Kichenok, who beat the Canadian Gabriela Dabrowski and the Australian Daria Saville by 6/2, 4/6 and 10-6. In the other semi-final, North Americans Coco Gauff and Jessica Pegula are the main favorites and face compatriot Desirae Krawczyk and Dutch Demi Schuurs, seeds 3.

The quarter-final match featured only one break of serve, won by Perez and Melichar early in the dispute. The 2 seeds of the tournament escaped a break point in the opening match and broke afterwards. With that, they won by 3/0 and didn’t take any chances in service games until the end of the set. The second part was entirely without breaks. Stefani and Yang had the set point when leading by 6/5, but the rivals confirmed serve and closed the match on the tie-break.