Swiatek goes on to face Kudermetova in the Last 4, who took out Pegula, the American No 1 and last year’s Madrid Mutua Open finalist, after 2 hours and 5 minutes. The Pole struck 11 winners to 8 unforced errors, and converted all 4 of her break points, while the Romanian made 17 unforced errors to just 8 winners. Martic, who had upset 2021 Roland Garros Barbora Krejcikova in the Round of 16 earlier in the week, finally got herself onto the scoreboard with a hold to 30 in her first service game of the second, but Swiatek earned the only break of the set in the 7th game, and held on to seal the win.

“To beat Jessica, it feels very nice, I’m so proud of myself because every match I played almost three hours,” said Kudermetova.Īgainst Martic, Swiatek took a bagel first set with 3 breaks of serve in just 27 minutes, dropping 7 of the 8 points on her serve. The 21-year old Pole won the first 7 games against Martic on her way to her dominating win, improving her record against her to 2-0.Įarlier, Russia’s Kudermetova had upset Pegula, 6-4 0-6 6-4, in a topsy-turvy affair to reach her first WTA 1000 semi-final after recovering from a second set collapse. “This is pretty great, because I didn’t know if that was going to be possible at the beginning of the tournament, but I was patient, and I was hoping to get that feeling, and today was, for sure, a good day.” “I feel like I’m playing better and better every day,” Swiatek said afterwards. Swiatek was in no mood to be dragged into the kind of dog-fight she got into against Ekaterina Alexandrova in the previous round, and made quick work of Martic, cruising to a 69-minute win over the No 33 from Romania, 6-0 6-3. In semi-finals, there are players who’ve played already a great tournament. I’m just going to focus on myself and what I want to do on court, tactically.

World No 1 Iga Swiatek was not prepared to invest much time in dispatching Petra Martic in the quarter-final of the Mutua Madrid Open on Wednesday evening, after her very late 1am finish on Tuesday morning, while Jessica Pegula, the 3rd seed, was outpaced by Veronika Kudermetova in 3 sets earlier in the day, extinguishing the chance of the top 3 players in the world making it through to the Last 4.“If I would like to play Wimbledon, I need to take the badge off.” For me, it doesn’t really matter what our head-to-head is. Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window).Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window).

Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window).Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window).

I Don't Want to Kill You by Dan Wells