{"id":464197,"date":"2026-02-07T10:17:13","date_gmt":"2026-02-07T10:17:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/464197\/"},"modified":"2026-02-07T10:17:13","modified_gmt":"2026-02-07T10:17:13","slug":"czech-outsider-bejlek-downs-tauson-in-titanic-battle-to-set-up-final-against-alexandrova","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/464197\/","title":{"rendered":"Czech outsider Bejlek downs Tauson in titanic battle to set up final against Alexandrova"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Czech World No. 101, Sara Bejlek reached the first WTA final of her career when she defeated the third-seeded Clara Tauson in the semi-final of the Abu Dhabi Open 7-5, 3-6, 7-3 in a titanic battle. <\/p>\n

Clara Tauson<\/a> missed the final of the WTA 500 tournament in Abu Dhabi on Friday. In a marathon match of almost three hours, the Danish favorite lost 5-7, 6-3, 5-7 to Sara Bejlek<\/a> in the semi-final.<\/p>\n

The 20-year-old Czech had to qualify for the tournament and played probably the biggest match of his career after a terrific week with five wins in two sets – several of them significant surprises.<\/p>\n

In a generally very well-played match against Tauson, she showed a huge running capacity and will to fight, which is why she is now ready for the first WTA final of her career.<\/p>\n

In the final, she will face the Russian Ekaterina Alexandrova<\/a>, who is the top-seeded player in the tournament. The 31-year-old Russian is ranked 11th in the world and has five WTA titles to her name.<\/p>\n

On Friday, Tauson got off to a good start and took a 4-2 lead in the first set after a hard-fought break of serve to make it 3-2.<\/p>\n

But with a very convincing game, Bejlek broke back to 4-4, and at 5-5, the Dane received treatment for a foot problem.<\/p>\n

Although she looked a little hampered, she led 40-15 in the following game before it all fell apart. Bejlek won 12 successive points to win the first set 7-5.<\/p>\n

Tauson quickly recovered her stylish stride in the second set and found herself up 4-1 after fighting off two break points. Tauson eventually took the second set 6-3 but fell behind 0-2 going into the third set before clawing her way back to 2-2 before she was broken for the fifth time in the match against the Czech fighter.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The two players continued to trade blows and have their share of momentum as the game at 5-5 in the third set turned out to be the longest and most decisive game of the match. About a handful of times, each player had the opportunity to take the lead, and in the end Bejlek prevailed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That seemed to take the final air out of Tauson, and Bejlek served the match at home.<\/p>\n

In the other semi-final Ekaterina Alexandrova fought off a match point at 4-5 in the second set to defeat American wild card Hailey Baptiste 3-6, 7-6(5), 6-3 to advance to her 13th career Tour-level final.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Czech World No. 101, Sara Bejlek reached the first WTA final of her career when she defeated…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":464198,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":["post-464197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=464197"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464197\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/464198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=464197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=464197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=464197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}