The Ukrainian Elena Rybakina, fifth in the world, leaving the number one, Belarusian Aryna Sabalenka, from the WTA semifinals in Beijing, unable to find a way into the match after losing a tight first set (7-5and 6 -2). ). Rybakina will play for a place in the final against the Russian Lyudmila Samsonova.
Another semifinal will face the numbers two and three in the ranking: the Polish Iga Swiatek and the recent winner of the United States Open, the American Coco Gauff.
Rybakina held off Sabalenka throughout the first set. The loss of the eleventh game, in which there were seven equal advantage situations, with five break points for the Ukrainian, finally decentred the number one. In the second set, he didn’t have a single chance to break his opponent’s serve.
The Rybakina-Samsonova clash will once again bring a Ukrainian and a Russian player face-to-face, although she has been denied her national identity since the start of the Ukrainian war. Samsonova earned her place in the semifinals by defeating 13 seed Jelena Ostapenko of Latvia, 6-3, 6-2.
The Russian has a positive record against Rybakina, three wins in three matches.
Iga Swiatek qualified with a close victory over Frenchwoman Caroline Garcia, 6-7 (8), 7-6 (5) and 6-1. The world number two has shown the same gaps that have hampered her game in recent weeks, ever since she was ousted from the world summit by Sabalenka. Only in the third set was she clearly superior to the Frenchwoman and only wavered in the closing process, squandering four match points before taking advantage of the next one.
Coco Gauff, on the other hand, showed confidence and a good game against the Greek Maria Sakkari, who she won with a score of 6-2, 6-4. In his previous confrontations with Swiatek, the balance was overwhelmingly in favor of the Pole: 7-1.
The Beijing tournament is a WTA 1,000 on hard courts that distributes 8.1 million dollars in prizes. It has not been contested since 2019, due first to the pandemic and then to WTA sanctions against China over the Peng Shuai case.
Source: La Verdad
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