Karolina Muchova defied all odds by saving a match point before battling past second seed Aryna Sabalenka to reach the French Open final.
The unseeded Muchova will meet defending champion Iga Swiatek, who reached the final for the third time in four years with a 6-2 7-6 (9-7) win over Brazil’s Beatriz Haddad Maia on Thursday.
Sabalenka, the Australian Open champion, would have taken over top spot in the rankings by winning the title in Paris.
But she suffered a massive loss of nerve against an opponent clearly struggling with cramp towards the end of an epic encounter, but who won the final five games.
Sabalenka failed to convert her chance at 5-2 in the third set and bowed out to the gifted Czech 7-6 (7-5) 6-7 (7-5) 7-5. It was her first defeat in 13 slam matches this year.
The last unseeded player left in the men’s or women’s draw, Muchova, 26, did not attempt to match Sabalenka’s massive hitting power from the baseline.
Instead the Czech, who battled back from the mid-200s into the top 50 after an injury in 2021, opted for a lighter touch.
She sliced the ball to take the pace off, playing Sabalenka’s backhand and hitting drop shots to force the tall Belarusian into the net.
Sabalenka, the biggest hitter in the women’s game, could not use her fierce forehand at will and was clearly rattled.
She was broken as Muchova moved 5-4 up in the first set but the Czech wasted one set point on her serve and was broken straight back before bagging the set at the second opportunity in the tiebreaker.
The Belarusian was then broken at the start of the second set. The pair traded two breaks each in the second set before Sabalenka earned two set points in the tiebreaker.
She squandered the first with a double fault but showed no nerves on the next to level.
Sabalenka snatched the key break in the third to move 4-2 clear but her serve deserted her as the match reached its conclusion after more than three hours.
After Muchova had saved a match point at 5-2 down, she won five straight games to reach her first grand slam final.
“I was ready to leave it all out there. I did. At that moment, 2-5, I didn’t really know if I’ll make it or not,” Muchova said in the post-match press conference.
“I was trying to … play every point and put her under pressure, try to get back into the game and mix it up with slices and don’t give her easy balls, because she was serving really well.”
Swiatek also found it tough going against Haddad Maia. The world No.1 showed rare signs of frustrations but managed to hold it together when it mattered to prevail as the clock ticked past 9pm.
Haddad Maia, the No.14 seed, had played four consecutive three-set matches to fight her way to the semi-finals but she finally met her match in Swiatek, who battled through a thrilling tiebreaker to claim victory.
Swiatek is likely to be the overwhelming favourite in Saturday’s final: she has reached it without losing a set and had dropped just 23 games in her six matches.
Sabalenka, meanwhile, is out after a controversial tournament in which she faced questions on her country’s support of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
She skipped two post-match press conferences as she initially refused to condemn the war before later expressing her opposition to it and to Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko.
“I felt bad emotionally after one press conference,” she said. “I couldn’t sleep. But the only thing I can do well in this life is play tennis, so I try to focus on things I could control and I could do.
“So there wasn’t any moment when I was, like, I don’t want to play tennis. That’s the only thing I do well in life and I have some control.
“I’m really exhausted right now. But it’s only because I lost this match. It’s been great couple of weeks with some emotional challenges, but I get through it. I think I’ll be stronger.”
– AAP
