By Lauren Lynch

(May 6, 2011) The ladies semifinals have been set at the Mutua Madrid Open on Friday! The Wozniacki slayer, World No. 27 Julia Goerges defeated Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova 6-4, 6-2 for her first semifinal at a big purse($4.5 mil for the winner) WTA Premier tournament.

The only unseeded player left in the draw, Goerges will most likely join the top 25 and with a final win the top 20 or higher. Before getting ahead of ourselves, she must get through the fourth seed and world No. 5 Victoria Azarenka, who recently took the Sony Ericsson Open title. Belarusian Azarenka outdid Lucie Safarova 6-3, 3-6, 6-2 winning 70% of total service points and hitting five aces. The last and only time Azarenka met Goerges was recently in Stuttgart where Goerges won the match after Victoria Azarenka had to retire with a shoulder injury at 4-6 and Goerges went on to win the title.

Sixth seed Na Li played American Bethanie Mattek-Sands and made it to the semifinals 6-4, 3-6, 6-4. Mattek-Sand stuggled with five aces and had difficulty with her return game. This is Na's first semifinal in Madrid, last year she fell to Shahar Peer but was seeded thirteenth at the time.

Na will meet with World No. 18 and sixteenth seed Petra Kvitova for the first time. Kvitova defeat Dominika Cibulkova 3-6, 6-3, 7-5 with five aces in two hours and sixteen minutes. Despite winning the first set Cibulkova could only save 29% of break points hitting eight double faults.