Reigning champion and world number one Iga Swiatek will face unseeded Czech Karolina Muchova in the French Open final after defeating Brazilian 14th seed Beatriz Haddad Maia on Thursday.
Poland’s Swiatek beat Brazil’s Haddad Maia 6-2, 7-6 (9/7) on Thursday.
The victory also assured Swiatek of keeping the No. 1 ranking after the tournament.
The 22-year-old Polish player is trying to win her third title at the French Open and fourth major trophy overall.
Swiatek is now 60-13 in Grand Slam play for her career — the same record Serena Williams had after 73 matches at majors.
She did not begin particularly well on Thursday, getting broken at love in the very first game. But she quickly turned that set around. Then, in the second, the big-swinging, left-handed Haddad Maia took a 3-1 lead, before Swiatek got back on serve.
In the tiebreaker, Haddad Maia held a set point at 6-5, but she slapped a seemingly neutral ball into the net. A few moments later, it was over.
The 14th-seeded Haddad Maia, who was suspended for 10 months for doping after failing a test in 2019, was the first woman from Brazil to reach a Grand Slam semifinal in 55 years.
On Saturday, Swiatek will face unseeded Karolina Muchova, a 26-year-old from the Czech Republic, who advanced to her first Slam final with a 7-6 (5), 6-7 (5), 7-5 victory over Belarus’ Aryna Sabalenka, the reigning Australian Open champion.
Unseeded underdog in epic comeback
Australian Open champion Sabalenka would have taken over the top spot in the rankings by winning the title in Paris but she failed to convert her chance at 5-2 in the third set of her semi-final match and bowed out to the gifted Czech, who cleverly defused her opponent's power game and took the last five games in a row.
The last unseeded player left in the men's and women's draw, Muchova 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 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 tiebreak.
The Belarusian, who had caused a furore in the tournament after her initial refusal to comment on Russia's invasion of Ukraine and her country's role as a staging ground for Russian troops, was broken at the start of the second.
The pair traded two breaks each in the second set before Sabalenka earned two set points in the tiebreak.
She squandered the first with a double fault but showed no nerves on the next to level.
Sabalenka wasted four break points at 1-0 but snatched the key break in the third to move 4-2 clear.
After Muchova had saved a match point at 5-2 down she launched her own comeback to win five straight games and reach her first Grand Slam final.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP and Reuters)
