Iga Swiatek secures semi-final date with Jessica Pegula, Elena Rybakina wins late night marathon
World No 1 Iga Swiatek has advanced to the semi-finals in Montreal for the first time, where she will face American Jessica Pegula.
Swiatek, who has been the top-ranked woman for 72 weeks, defeated American Danielle Collins in three sets 6-3 4-6 6-2.
Collins fought back in the second set but the Polish star took advantage of the second serve throughout the match, breaking Collins twice in the last set to seal the victory.
After the match, Swiatek said she is “really proud” to go through to the semi-finals.
“I really wanted to play powerful and I’m pretty happy that I managed to even increase the power in the third set,” she said.
“For sure, I was looking for that. Today I felt like I really needed to go even higher in terms of the intensity.”
She will face Pegula, who defeated doubles partner and American Coco Gauff to end her six-match win streak in three sets 6-2 5-7 7-5.
The marathon match lasted more than two hours with Pegula holding serve to take her through to the semis.
Pegula said after the match that she wanted to stay “as tough as possible” and “keep the pressure on early”.
“It’s always tough to play your doubles partner, you know exactly what you’re trying to do. It just came down to the wire and who was going to compete better.”
In a gruelling late-night triumph against tenth seed Daria Kasatkina, Elena Rybakina survived a match point before advancing to the Omnium Banque Nationale quarterfinals.
In their quarterfinal classic, Rybakina defeated Kasatkina 5-7, 7-5, 7-6(8) after 3 hours and 27 minutes of play. Just five minutes before the clock struck three in the morning on Saturday, the game was finally over.
This final match of the day was by far the longest of the day, despite four of the five previous matches being three-setters that went over two hours. One of the ten longest matches thus far this season, Rybakina and Kasatkina were cheered on by a clutch of hardcore fans deep into the night.
After being 0-3 in WTA 1000 quarter-finals prior to this year, Rybakina has now won all four of her 2023 matches. Rybakina extends her lead on the WTA Tour’s match wins list.
Rybakina also leads the circuit in aces so far this year. Against Kasatkina, she added seven more strikes, bringing her yearly total to 370.
In the hotly contested match, both Rybakina and Kasatkina broke serve ten times, but Rybakina advances to a semifinal matchup against No. 15 seed Liudmila Samsonova.
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