Poland’s world No. 4 Agnieszka Radwanska breezed past Spaniard Larra Arruabarrena 6-0, 6-2 in the semi-finals of the Korea Open yesterday to set up a title clash with Russia’s Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova.
Pavlyuchenkova, seeded third, had a tough outing against former French Open champion Francesca Schiavone of Italy, but eventually prevailed in the other semi-final.
In a match that could have gone either way and saw only two breaks in 24 service games, the Russian third seed dug deep against the spirited Italian to win 7-6 (13/11), 7-6 (8/6).
Photo: EPA
She had to save three set points in the first set tie-break and battled back from 3-0 down in the second set breaker to close it out.
Top-seeded Radwanska continued her good form on her Seoul debut, having dropped just 11 games in four matches, and only needed 64 minutes to thrash the Spaniard, ranked 113 in the world.
“It was definitely a very good match. I was playing really good tennis,” Radwanska said, after reaching her fourth final of the year.
“It was really hot out there, but I played my 100 percent throughout the match, so that’s why it was two quick sets,” she said.
In the semi-finals of the women’s doubles Taiwan’s Chan Chin-wei Chan and Xu Yi-fan of China continued their impressive run by defeating third seeds Shuko Aoyama of Japan and Megan Moulton-Levy of the US 7-5, 6-1. The Taiwanese/Chinese duo will face top seeds Raquel Kops-Jones and Abigail Spears of the US in today’s final.
Additional reporting by staff writer
GUANGZHOU OPEN
Reuters
China’s wild-card entrant Zhang Shuai won her maiden WTA Tour singles title with a 7-6 (7/1) 6-1 victory over Taiwanese-American qualifier Vania King in the Guangzhou Open final yesterday.
Playing in her first singles final, the 112th-ranked Zhang continued her run of straight-set victories to win the US$500,000 hard-court tournament in front of a delighted home crowd.
After an evenly matched first set, Zhang ran through the second, winning 16 of the last 17 points against the 124th-ranked King.
Zhang became the fifth Chinese player to win a WTA title after Li Na, Zheng Jie, Yan Zi and Sun Tiantian.
In the doubles final top seeds Hsieh Su-wei of Taiwan and Peng Shuai of China defeated King and Kazakshtan’s Galina Voskoboeva, the No. 3 seeds, 6-3, 4-6, 12-10.
Additional reporting by staff writer
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