By Chris Oddo | @TheFanChild | Saturday August 12, 2023
World No.4 Elena Rybakina saved a match point to defeat Daria Kasatkina in a late night battle that finished just before 3 AM at the Omnium Banque Nationale in Montreal.
The Kazakh hung on, 5-7, 7-5, 7-6(8) to set a semifinal with Liudmila Samsonova of Russia. Rybakina’s victory took three hours and 27 minutes on a long day in Montreal.
There was over 13 hours of tennis on a jam-packed day on Court Central that featured two three-hour epics and another two contests that lasted well over two hours.
2022 Wimbledon champion Rybakina improves to 38-9 on the season, and 24-5 on hard courts.
In a topsy-turvy affair that featured ten breaks of serve from each player, Rybakina rebounded from a break down in the third set and saved a match point at 7-8 in the final set tiebreak.
Rybakina improves to 2-2 against the 14th-ranked Russian–she has won a tour-leading 14 tiebreaks in 2023 (14-2), including nine at the WTA 1000 level.
Friday's marathon order of play featured double duty from Samsonova and Belinda Bencic, who moved through their round of 16 clashes earlier in the day before clashing in the quarterfinals. By the time the pair met to kick off the night session in Montreal, the order of play was already way behind schedule.
Bencic, who struggled to get past Petra Kvitova in the round of 16, was overpowered by Samsonova, who hit 30 winners to just six for Bencic in a 6-4 6-4 victory.
Samsonova, who beat No.2-seeded Aryna Sabalenka earlier on Friday, reaches her first WTA 1000 semifinal.