Tennis News

CINCINNATI, OH, USA – And then there were eight! It’s quarterfinal Friday at the Western & Southern Open in Cincinnati. Chris Oddo previews the match-ups for wtatennis.com.

Friday, Quarterfinals

Center Court
[2] Angelique Kerber (GER #2) vs. [9] Carla Suárez Navarro (ESP #12)
Head-to-head: Kerber leads, 4-3

Key Stat: Kerber could ascend to the No.1 ranking with the title in Cincinnati.
Angelique Kerber is focused on the day-in, day-out aspects of being a top WTA pro. The rest of us? We’re curious to see if the German has what it takes to end Serena Williams’ remarkable 183-week reign atop the WTA’s rankings. Kerber could achieve that milestone with a title run, but it’s the furthest thing from her mind at the moment. While we watch the story unfold on Friday when Kerber meets Carla Suárez Navarro for a spot in the semis, the World No.2 will be concentrating on process. “On the court I’m really trying to focus and play my best tennis,” she said on Thursday after defeating Barbora Strycova in straight sets. “And my goal is always to go on court and win the match. Of course I mean it’s a goal to be one day the No.1, but let’s see if it happens, when it happens, whatever. I will not be putting this pressure on myself – I’m just trying to play step by step.” It’s the best way to proceed for Kerber, and so far in Cincinnati she has been able to deflect the pressure and play the type of tennis that got her to this point. Will she be able to continue her rise against the feisty Spaniard who defeated her earlier this summer in Birmingham? Or will Suárez Navarro, already one of three Premier 5 titlists this season, make her own story unfold?

Pick: Suárez Navarro in three

[3] Simona Halep (ROU #4) vs. [5] Agnieszka Radwanska (POL #5)
Head-to-head: Radwanska leads, 5-4

Key Stat: Halep stretched her win streak to 12 with a straight-sets victory over Daria Gavrilova on Wednesday.
Red-hot Simona Halep is loving life in Cincinnati. And why shouldn’t she be? The Romanian is well-rested, suited aptly for the fast-playing conditions at the Lindner Family Tennis Center, and gaining confidence with each successive victory. Halep made it 12 in a row on Thursday when she rolled past Aussie qualifier Daria Gavrilova, and afterwards she cited her legs as the biggest contributor to her recent success. She says her recent training block with Gil Reyes, former trainer of Andre Agassi, has helped her fitness immensely, and she also confirmed that the injuries that sabotaged her play early in the season are behind her. It all adds up to a very formidable Halep, one that is looking more and more like a title contender each day. She’ll have to be formidable on Friday if she is to get by No.5-seeded Agnieszka Radwanska. Radwanska reached her fourth Cincinnati quarterfinal in five years on Thursday by coming from behind to defeat Johanna Konta in three sets. Will Radwanska be able to stop the run of surging Halep in their 10th meeting, or will the Romanian’s scorching form prove too much to handle yet again?

Pick: Halep in three

Grandstand
[7] Svetlana Kuznetsova (RUS #10) vs. [15] Karolina Pliskova (CZE #17)
Head-to-head: First meeting

Key Stat: Kuznetsova improved to 15-4 in deciding sets this year with her win third-round win over Timea Bacsinszky.
It has been a fantastic season for 31-year-old Svetlana Kuznetsova. She achieved her first win over a reigning world No.1 since 2009 in Miami when she snapped Serena Williams’ 20-match winning streak at the event. And that’s not even the half of it. Kuznetsova, now the top-ranked Russian and inside the Top 10 for the first time since 2010, has won 30 matches, claimed her 16th career title, and been a threat to go deep in every draw she has played. Occupying the 10th spot in the Road to Singapore standings, the Russian is playing for valuable points in the next months, and she’ll look to continue pushing her momentum forward when she meets 15th-seed Karolina Pliskova for the first time on Friday. The bomb-serving Czech still hasn’t made her mark at the Slams but she has been lethal elsewhere, with four semifinals, two finals and a title to her name this season. Here in Cincinnati, she has yet to drop a set in two matches.

Pick: Kuznetsova in three

[4] Garbiñe Muguruza (ESP #3) vs. [Q] Timea Babos (HUN #41)
Head-to-head: Muguruza leads, 3-0

Key Stat: Their last two battles have gone to three sets.
There is fire in the eyes of Garbiñe Muguruza this week in Cincinnati, and that’s bad news for her competitors. The Spaniard had an understandable dip in level after winning her maiden Grand Slam in Paris this year, but she appears to be very determined to put that behind her as she prepares to ramp up her game ahead of the year’s final major. Muguruza has yet to drop a set in Cincinnati and though she was pushed at times by Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova on Thursday, she played a very solid match, particularly from the service stripe where she saved six of seven break points and won 31 of 41 first-serve points. On Friday she’ll face one of the tour’s most improved players in 23-year-old Timea Babos. The Hungarian produced an upset on Thursday in defeating eighth-seeded Dominika Cibulkova. It was the Hungarian’s biggest win of the year rankings-wise, but she’s 1-10 against the Top 10 lifetime and 0-3 against Muguruza. She’ll need something magical to push past a resurgent Muguruza on Friday.

Pick: Muguruza in two

By the numbers…
306 – Number of weeks that Serena Williams has held the No. 1 ranking, which is third-most all time behind Martina Navratilova (332) and Steffi Graf (377).ber of consecutive weeks that Serena Williams has held the No. 1 ranking, which is third-most all time behind Martina Navratilova (332) and Steffi Graf (377).
41 – Babos’ position in the world rankings – the lowest of the draw’s eight remaining players.
19-2 – Halep’s record since the start of Roland Garros this year.
7 – Number of seeded players that have advanced to the quarterfinals in Cincinnati.

CINCINNATI, OH, USA – Angelique Kerber fought back to defeat Carla Suárez Navarro at the Western & Southern Open and move within touching distance of claiming the No.1 ranking.

Watch live action from Cincinnati this week on WTA Live powered by TennisTV!

By winning the title in Cincinnati, Kerber will end Serena Williams’ 183-week reign as World No.1, and she kept the dream alive with a 4-6, 6-3, 6-0 victory on Friday aftrnoon.

Earlier this summer Suárez Navarro edged Kerber in a high-quality encounter in Birmingham. While the rematch failed to scale these heights, for a set and a half it looked like the result would go the same way.

The chase for top spot has now seen Kerber play 21 matches since the start of June, and at times against Suárez Navarro she appeared to be running on empty. Her usual consistency from the back of the court conspicuous by its absence, the No.2 seed committed 17 unforced errors in dropping the opening set.

Fortunately for the German, the soaring temperatures and a leg injury caused her opponent to fall away spectacularly, struggling in vain to keep fatigue at bay. The turning point came midway through the second set, a scrappy game giving Kerber a 4-2 and some much-needed momentum.

Willing herself forward, she hung onto this lead, swinging a serve out wide and beyond Suárez Navarro’s reach to level the match. This positivity continued into the decider, a brilliant angled backhand bringing an immediate break as she hurtled towards a semifinal meeting with either Simona Halep.

“I think I changed a little bit my game in the second set: I was trying to go for it when I have the chance and to making the rallies a little bit shorter,” Kerber said. “I was still thinking that I can turn around the match even after losing the first set and going down a break early in the next set.”

CINCINNATI, OH, USA – Top seed Angelique Kerber kept her bid for the WTA’s top ranking alive after defeating Simona Halep 6-3, 6-4 to reach the final at the Western & Southern Open.

Watch live action from Cincinnati this week on WTA Live powered by TennisTV!

With back to back titles at Bucharest and Montréal, Halep came into the matchup on the back of a 13-match winning streak, and without ever having lost to Kerber on hardcourts. They’d played six times previously and while Kerber owns one win on clay and one on grass, Halep had won all four of their hardcourt matches, including their last meeting in the semifinals of the Rogers Cup.

The players traded breaks to open the match. Halep was playing fast, going for quick winners but earning loose unforced errors, instead. The conditions didn’t help, either, as the win wreaked havoc on her normally sharp timing.

Another spot of Cincinnati’s rain came down again and suspended play for half an hour with both players on serve and Kerber leading 4-3. Upon resumption, Halep’s woes continued as she was quickly broken. The German rattled off five straight games to take the opening set and carve out a 4-0 lead in the second.

Follow live game-by-game analysis from Cincinnati semifinals day on WTA Insider’s Live Blog.

Calmer now in the second set despite the deficit, Halep began leaning into her backhand and taking control of the points. She rattled off three games in a row to narrow Kerber’s lead to just one break. But the German slammed the door on a Halep comeback, saving break point at 5-3 and outrallying her to draw out two errors from the Romanian.

With the finish line in sight, the match had one final hurdle for the World No.2: Kerber broke her string on match point, but a misplaced lob from Halep drifted wide to give Kerber the win anyways.

.@AngeliqueKerber is ONE win away from becoming World No.1! #CincyTennis https://t.co/ii3DU83AYF

— WTA (@WTA) August 20, 2016

“My strings have never broken! And it just broke during the match, and on match point. I was just hoping the ball would go in because I don’t know what to do with the racquet!”

Although Halep hit more winners than Kerber – 21 to Kerber’s 12 – she also hit a whopping 50 unforced errors against Kerber’s 21. The Romanian also struck five double faults and converted just three of five break points, while Kerber won five out of 15.

With the win, Kerber returns to the final of the Western & Southern Open for the first time since 2012, but there’s an even bigger prize up for grabs than just the Cincy title.

Should Kerber win in tomorrow’s final, the reigning Australian Open champion would overtake Serena Williams as WTA World No.1, snapping the American’s streak at 306 consecutive weeks.

“I think of course I’m playing now some of my best tennis,” Kerber said of the possibility of taking the top spot. “It’s one of the best years in my career. I had a lot of up and downs in the last few years and I had a lot of experience from which I learned.

“I think now I’m showing that I’m really one of the best tennis players.

“It’s still one match away, but it’s still a long match. I will not thinking about this yet. It’s a new opponent, a new day, and after that we will see what happened yeah, it’s not over yet. Still one match to go.”

Only Karolina Pliskova stands between Kerber and the top spot, and the No-17-ranked Czech is up for the challenge.

“I don’t know if she would be a little bit in stress or something, but I would love to have her as a No. 1 after few years. But I’ll do anything for her to not getting there,” Pliskova said.

CINCINNATI, OH, USA – World Co-No.1s Sania Mirza and Martina Hingis reached the Western & Southern Open final, but found themselves on opposite sides of the net as Mirza and new partner Barbora Strycova recovered from 5-1 in the opening set to beat Hingis and CoCo Vandeweghe, 7-5, 6-4.

“I’m not going to lie,” Mirza said after the match. “It’s a very difficult situation. It’s not easy because, A, because we are still good friends, so it’s never easy. The first we tournament we split and we come and we have to play each other. Of course there is no better match to play than the final, so was difficult, I think. for both of us.

“But having said that we are professional tennis players. We have to come out and we have to give our best and we have to try and win. That’s all we can do, and we both tried to do that.

“It was going to happen eventually. We had to play against each other at some point. I think it’s better that it happened earlier, as soon as we came out, because next time it’s obviously less difficult to play.”

Hingis and Mirza were indeed playing their first tournament apart since officially confirming their split last week, and with both women advancing into the championship match, only one could remain No.1 as the points earned this week would be counted among their best results that make up their WTA ranking total.

Not that the notion bothered Mirza.

“As cliche as it sounds, a ranking is really just a number. At the end of the day you have to come out and you have to play your best tennis. That’s what we did, and we feel like that’s why we won the tournament.

“For us it’s important to win every time we play. We both fight; we both like to play and we both like tennis obviously.”

In Strycova, Mirza found another great partner, one who’d arrived in Cincinnati having just earned an Olympic bronze medal in women’s doubles.

“She was obviously one of my first choices because I felt like we could play well together given our games.

“We know each other. To be honest, we have not been like friends so to say, but we know each other since we were 15 years old. We’ve always had mutual respect for each other and our games. At least I have had.”

“Me too,” Strycova added.

Enjoying a career-best season with solid results in both disciplines, the Czech veteran admits she enjoys doubles on both a tactical and emotional level.

“I’m very emotional player. I need the communication. I need to put the emotions away.

“But you have to see the balance when it hurts me or when it or helps me. I’m 30 years old and didn’t still find it, but I’m working on it!”

In front of a packed house (and playing together for 1st time), Mirza/Strycova win the doubles title.#CincyTennis pic.twitter.com/9oPKL3aqlU

— W&S Open (@CincyTennis) August 21, 2016