Barbora Krejčíková a month ago at the clay Open French Open, she played for the first time in the eighth finals of grand slams, winning her debut in the elite hundred of world rankings, and in the Ostrava hall as a qualifier in the second round she collected a set of former world number one and later finalist Viktoria Azarenková.
She followed up on the great performances of recent weeks in Linz, even though it didn’t look like that at first. The 24-year-old Czech had great problems with qualifiers Harmony Tan and Greet Minnen and stayed on the court together for five hours.
During the rest of the tournament, however, her performance began to escalate in the right direction. In the quarterfinals, in just 67 minutes she swept Alexander Sasnovičová and in the semifinals, despite excellent performance, after two hours of fighting she lost 5-7 6-4 3-6 to the number one seed Aryně Sabalenková.
Against the world eleven, Krejčíková was able to immediately eliminate the shortage of the break in the opening and second acts. While she lost service again at the end of the opening set, she was successful at the end of the second set and leveled the match. In the decisive act, the Czech hope was the first breakball, but Sabalenková dealt with it and in the eighth gamma she celebrated a key break, although Krejčíková managed to equalize from 0-40 to a match. The favored Belarus then masterfully ended the match.
Krejčíková played the semifinals on the main circuit for the second time in her career. Its maximum remains the three-year-old final from the clay event in Nuremberg. In the WTA rankings, the native of Brno will improve by nine places, will skip Kristýna Plíšková and will be in 65th place, exactly behind her doubles partner Kateřina Siniaková. She failed to beat the Top 30 even on the ninth attempt.
At the moment, undefeated Sabalenková, who advanced to the finals for the first time in her career in the elite ten, went through the semifinals for the third time this year and won the entire tournament in both previous cases (Doha and Ostrava). Overall, he is twelfth overall in the final and will attack his eighth title. Her last rival this season will be her doubles partner Elise Mertensová (H2H 3-2).
The 24-year-old Belgian woman in Linz managed her third three-hundredth match. The second seed in the semifinals defeated the previous year’s finalist 2-6 6-1 7-5 Ekaterina Alexandrovova and for the second time this season and on the main circuit, she advanced to the finals for the first time in her indoor career. In it, he will try to improve his final balance 5-2 and get the first title since last February.
However, Czech tennis will still be represented in the finals. Lucie Hradecká and Kateřina Siniaková will attack the first joint triumph tomorrow in their sixth final. Their rivals will be Arantxa Rusová and Tamara Zidanšeková, who defeated Gabriela Dabrowská and Věra Zvonareva 7-6 (7) 4-6 10-6 today.
| • Singles – Semifinals • |
| Sabalenková (1-BEL) – Krejčíková (CZE) 7-5 4-6 6-3 |
| Mertens (2-Belg.) – Alexandrova (4-RUS) 2-6 6-1 7-5 |
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