Four-time Grand Slam winner Naomi Osaka on Thursday advanced to the semi-finals of the Wimbledon warm-up tournament in Bad Homburg, Germany, after a dominant victory over Ekaterina Alexandrova, while Hsieh Su-wei of Taiwan also won her doubles quarter-final.
The Japanese sixth seed won 6-2, 6-2 in just 59 minutes to reach the final four of the grass court tournament just days from the start of Wimbledon.
Osaka, the world No. 15, was one win away from a first grass-court final of her career, with her semi-final to be played after press time last night.
Photo: Reuters
“Obviously I can’t say that I’ve had much experience on grass, but I feel really good right now,” Osaka said, adding that coach Tomas Wiktorowski, who started working with her in July last year, “is helping me understand grass a lot more, so I feel pretty comfortable at this point.”
Osaka was broken early in the opening set, but swiftly struck back against the unseeded Russian.
Osaka won eight straight games — a run that included 15 points in a row — as she took the opening set and ran out to a 3-0 lead in the second.
The 19th-ranked Alexandrova rallied to win her next two service games, but Osaka closed out the match.
Osaka was to play Chinese world No. 52 Wang Xinyu, who reached the final four when eighth-ranked Ukrainian Elina Svitolina pulled out citing exhaustion on Wednesday.
Fourth seed Karolina Muchova also made the last four after coming from a set down to beat Dane Clara Tauson 1-6, 6-2, 6-4 on Thursday.
The Czech was to play Romania’s Elena-Gabriel Ruse in the semi-finals. Ruse beat American Emma Navarro 6-4, 6-2 in one hour, 15 minutes earlier on Thursday.
In the women’s doubles at the Bad Homburg Tennis Club, Hsieh and Wang defeated Emily Webley-Smith of the UK and Germany’s Tamara Korpatsch 6-4, 6-3.
They were to play Russia’s Vera Zvonareva and Aldila Sutjiadi of Indonesia for a spot in the final at the 1,049,083 euro (US$1.2 million) tournament.
Additional reporting by staff writer
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