By Erik Gudris | Tuesday, March 31, 2015
Carla Suarez Navarro overcame suffering a first set blowout against Venus Williams to reach the Miami Open semifinals.
Photo Credit: Getty Images
As Spain's Carla Suarez Navarro put it, the first two sets were "crazy". But the steady baseliner held on to reach the Miami Open semifinals.
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Local favorite and three-time champion Venus Williams appeared on course to reach the final four. But nothing was certain in a match between the two players who split their last four meetings.
"Yeah, it was a crazy match, crazy first two sets," Suarez Navarro said later. "Venus was unbelievable at the beginning. I start a little bit nervous, but, you know, in tennis, even if you lost the first set, you're still in competition. I'm happy with the way I come back after the first set."
Williams came out firing in vintage form early in the first set. With potent forehand winners, Williams easily secured an early break and looked nearly untouchable.
A backhand return winner from Williams secured her the 6-0 first set in just 27 minutes.
But the question of if Williams could keep up her scorching pace lingered. That was soon answered in the second set. Suarez Navarro took advantage of several errors from her opponent to break in the opening game.
With Williams continuing to leak errors, Suarez Navarro began hitting winners that eluded her in the first set. The result? Suarez Navarro ran away with the second set 6-1.
With the match not even an hour old, the final set proved too close to call. During the opening games, both women traded breaks to reach 2-all.
Both players increased their shotmaking intensity to push the set to 5-all. While a tiebreak seemed inevitable, untimely errors from Willliams would prove her undoing.
Two double faults from Williams set the tone in the eleventh game as she tried to force a tiebreak. Williams' errors continued as she netted a backhand that set up match point for Suarez Navarro. A final forehand error from Williams cost her the match. Suarez Navarro advanced 0-6, 6-1, 7-5.
"Yeah, you know, just a little too many errors and I was going for it the whole match. Towards the end just never found the happy medium between being aggressive and putting the ball in the court," Williams said after the match.
Next up for Suarez Navarro is Andrea Petkovic. The ninth seeded German advanced into the semifinals with a 6-4, 6-2 win over No. 14 seed Karolina Pliskova 6-4, 6-2.