Daria Kasatkina yesterday won the Kremlin Cup as Tunisian qualifier Ons Jabeur narrowly failed to become the first WTA winner from her country.
Jabeur was a set and a break up at 4-1 in the second before she seemed to tire in her eighth match in as many days, allowing Kasatkina to claim a 2-6, 7-6 (8/3), 6-4 victory with vocal support from the home crowd.
Sixth-seeded Kasatkina ended a run of three losses in finals, including last year’s Kremlin Cup, and has a career 2-3 record. Her previous win was in Charleston in April last year.
Photo: Reuters
Ons Jabeur made history on Friday when she became the first Tunisian woman to reach a WTA final by seeing off Latvian fifth seed Anastasija Sevastova 6-3, 3-6, 6-3 at the Kremlin Cup in Moscow.
Ranked world No. 101 and making it through qualifying, Jabeur prevailed in 1 hour, 37 minutes.
“This is really amazing and I’m really happy. I gave it my all today and it wasn’t easy, because she plays really good,” said 24-year-old Jabeur, who unleashed 45 winners on her way to victory.
“Maybe I was too relaxed in the second set,” she added. “At the end, I stayed calm. It was a little bit frustrating, because I missed some easy balls, but I said I was just going to play my game — and if it goes, it goes.”
AP, STOCKHOLM
On the day that Wimbledon introduced final-set tiebreakers, the player behind the two longest-ever matches at the All England Club needed yet another one to advance to the semi-finals of the Stockholm Open.
Big-serving John Isner won his second all-American matchup of the week in the Swedish capital, beating Tennys Sandgren 7-6 (10/8), 6-7 (5/7), 7-6 (7/2) in the last of the quarter-finals on Friday. All six sets played by the top-seeded Isner at the tournament have gone to tiebreakers.
Two epic matches involving the big-serving Isner at Wimbledon likely prompted the Grand Slam to announce earlier on Friday that final-set tiebreakers would be played at the grass-court event from next year, when the score reaches 12-12 in the decider.
Isner beat Nicolas Mahut 70-68 in the final set of a match that took more than 11 hours in 2010, and lost 26-24 to Kevin Anderson in the fifth set in the semi-finals this year.
They are the two longest matches in the history of a tournament that began in 1877.
Both of Isner’s wins in Stockholm have been hard-fought and involved late-night finishes.
“It was very tough,” said the 10th-ranked Isner, who beat Bradley Klahn 7-6 (8/2), 6-7 (5/7), 7-6 (7/5) in the second round on Thursday. “It’s similar to last night — very late.”
“I need to take care of myself and go to bed,” he added.
Isner concluded the march of the top three seeds into the semi-finals.
Stefanos Tsitsipas, the third seed from Greece, beat Philipp Kohlschreiber of Germany 6-3, 7-6 (7/4) and second-seeded Italian Fabio Fognini advanced after his opponent, Chung Hyeon, retired during their match. Fognini was leading this year’s Australian Open semi-finalist 7-5, 2-1.
In the other quarter-final, fourth-seeded American Jack Sock lost 4-6, 6-3, 6-4 to Latvian Ernests Gulbis, the 2014 French Open semi-finalist, who is to face Isner.
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