Mary Pierce used an overpowering ground game to beat unseeded Peng Shuai of China 6-2, 6-2 Saturday and reach the title match at the Acura Classic.
The sixth-seeded Pierce dominated from the outset and gave the tired Peng few chances to pull off a fourth straight upset.
Ai Sugiyama will oppose Pierce in the final after Akiko Morigami retired in the second set of the other semifinal with a tendinitis in her right knee. Sugiyama was leading 6-4, 4-3 when Morigami called it quits in a matchup of unseeded players.
The match marked the first time two Japanese players faced off in a WTA Tier I semifinal.
Sugiyama, who has won all three career matches against Morigami, qualified for her first title match since January 2004 when she won a hardcourt tournament in Australia. Coming into the event, Sugiyama had failed to reach the quarterfinals in 18 straight tournaments.
"It's been awhile," Sugiyama said. "I'm so happy with the way I played."
Sugiyama, who along with Pierce is 30, holds a 6-4 career lead over Pierce.
Pierce, playing the event for the ninth time, reached her second Acura final. She lost in straight sets to Lindsay Davenport in 1998.
"I was happy with the way I started out the match," Pierce said. "I was really playing well. I knew what I needed to do against her. She's a dangerous player if you let her play. The key for me today was hitting the ball hard, being aggressive, hitting it deep."
Peng couldn't recapture the form that helped her beat seventh-seeded Kim Clijsters in straight sets Friday night and knock off third-seeded Elena Dementieva earlier in the week.
Fatigue may have played a role in the loss as the 19-year-old played slightly more than three hours Friday night between her singles match with Clijsters and a doubles match that lasted until 11pm local time.
"I was really tired from last night," Peng said. "Today, I played like I was so tired."
Pierce, ranked 14th and the only seeded player left in the semis, wasted no time in establishing herself. She broke Peng's serve in the first game at love and broke again in the fifth game for a 4-1 lead.
After Peng held serve to cut the lead to 5-2, Pierce fought off six break points in the eighth game before securing the first set with two aces.
The second set was almost just like the first, with Pierce breaking Peng's serve in the first game, and adding another break in the fifth game to take a 4-1 lead.
"As long as I was hitting the ball hard and hitting it deep, our rallies were not that long." Pierce said. "There was one way to beat her, and that was to be aggressive first."
Bayer 04 Leverkusen go into today’s match at TSG 1899 Hoffenheim stung from their first league defeat in 16 months. Leverkusen were beaten 3-2 at home by RB Leipzig before the international break, the first loss since May last year for the reigning league and cup champions. While any defeat, particularly against a likely title rival, would have disappointed coach Xabi Alonso, the way in which it happened would be most concerning. Just as they did in the Supercup against VfB Stuttgart and in the league opener to Borussia Moenchengladbach, Leverkusen scored first, but were pegged back. However, while Leverkusen rallied late to
If all goes well when the biggest marathon field ever gathered in Australia races 42km through the streets of Sydney on Sunday, World Marathon Majors (WMM) will soon add a seventh race to the elite series. The Sydney Marathon is to become the first race since Tokyo in 2013 to join long-established majors in New York, London, Boston, Berlin and Chicago if it passes the WMM assessment criteria for the second straight year. “We’re really excited for Sunday to arrive,” race director Wayne Larden told a news conference in Sydney yesterday. “We’re prepared, we’re ready. All of our plans look good on
The lights dimmed and the crowd hushed as Karoline Kristensen entered for her performance. However, this was no ordinary Dutch theater: The temperature was 80°C and the audience naked apart from a towel. Dressed in a swimsuit and to the tune of emotional music, the 21-year-old Kristensen started her routine, performed inside a large sauna, with a bed of hot rocks in the middle. For a week this month, a group of wellness practitioners, called “sauna masters,” are gathering at a picturesque health resort in the Netherlands to compete in this year’s Aufguss world sauna championships. The practice takes its name from a
When details from a scientific experiment that could have helped clear Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva landed at the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the leader of the organization’s reaction was unequivocal: “We have to stop that urgently,” he wrote. No mention of the test ever became public and Valieva’s defense at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) went on without it. What effect the information could have had on Valieva’s case is unclear, but without it, the skater, then 15 years old, was eventually disqualified from the 2022 Winter Olympics after testing positive for a banned heart medication that would later
RSS