By Chris Oddo | @TheFanChild | Friday October 4, 2024
Karolina Muchova rallied from a break down in the third set to snap Aryna Sabalenka's 15-match winning streak in Beijing.
Photo Source: Emmanuel Wong/ Getty
Aryna Sabalenka appeared to have a 16th consecutive win in the bag on Friday night in Beijing. Karolina Muchova – her nemesis these days – had other ideas.
The Czech wunderkind rallied from a break down to earn her third consecutive victory over Sabalenka, 7-6(5) 2-6 6-4, snapping the Belarusian’s 15-match winning streak and booking a semifinal with home favorite Zheng Qinwen.
Muchova, who saved two set points to win the opening set, needed two hours and 46 minutes to come through the tense affair, and improves to 3-1 lifetime against Sabalenka. She has a history of handing Sabalenka heartbreak – anyone who watched her save a match point to defeat Sabalenka in last year’s French open semifinals knows that.
The stakes weren’t quite as high as they were last spring when Muchova won in three hours and 13 minutes to reach her maiden Slam final, but the Czech’s latest impressive win puts her in her sixth WTA 1000 semifinal.
“She's one of the best players playing her best tennis these days,” Muchova said. “You really have to be ready to attack, because if you slice slow ball or something she's really going to smash you.”
After dropping the middle set and falling behind by a break twice in the third, Muchova took the final four games of the match. Sabalenka, while serving at 4-3 in the third, saved three break points but couldn’t avoid getting broken.
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Muchova won the final ten points of the match.
"Second set I fell a little short,” she said. “I felt a little down and she was just smashing it. I just tried to get through the second set, tried to regroup. Third set, I was just trying to fight for every ball. We've had some close battles, so I was trying to put every ball over the net and it was worth it in the end."
Friday’s second quarterfinal also featured a comeback win. This time it was China’s Zheng Qinwen who became the first Chinese woman to reach the semis in Beijing since 2018 with a 5-7, 6-0, 6-4 win over teen sensation Mirra Andreeva.
Zheng, the Olympic women’s singles gold medalist, has now gone 20-2 since Wimbledon.
She flipped the script on Andreeva in the pair’s first career meeting, dominating the middle set before rallying from 4-2 down in the decider to book her spot alongside Muchova in the last four.
It has been a season of firsts for Zheng, who reached her maiden Grand Slam final at the Australian Open before winning gold in Paris this summer.
She defeated Muchova in the pair’s only previous meeting, for the title at Palermo this summer.