Anastasia Potapova dropped to her knees, put both hands on her face and started crying.<\/p>\n
The “explosion of emotions inside” came after the 56th-ranked Austrian became the first ‘lucky loser’ to reach a WTA 1000 semifinal.<\/p>\n
Potapova defeated Karol\u00edna Pl\u00ed\u0161kov\u00e1 6-1, 6-7 (4\/7), 6-3 in the Madrid Open quarterfinals.<\/p>\n
She almost gave up the victory, squandering three match points in the second set.<\/p>\n
Potapova had to overcome a 1-3 deficit in the decisive set.<\/p>\n
“I [had] a few match points in the second set, on serve, but I couldn’t manage my nerves at that time,” Potapova said.<\/p>\n
“It seems that this tournament keeps giving me second chances and I keep using them. So [I’m] super happy.”<\/p>\n
Potapova got into the main draw as a lucky loser despite losing her second qualifying match in Madrid.<\/p>\n
She became the first lucky loser to reach a WTA 1000 or Tier I semifinal since the tier format’s inception in 1990.<\/p>\n
Potapova went on to win four straight matches, including against world number two Elena Rybakina in the round of 16.<\/p>\n
“To be honest, I didn’t expect myself being in the draw again because at first they didn’t take my name as a lucky loser,” Potapova said.<\/p>\n
“And then the days kept on going, and nobody was injured or pulling out.<\/p>\n
“Then the last moment I got the information, literally 30 minutes before the match \u2026 I was given a chance to step on court here again.”<\/p>\n
Potapova will play 26th-seeded Ukrainian Marta Kostyuk in the semifinals.<\/p>\n
Kostyuk defeated Czech 13th seed Linda Noskov\u00e1 7-6 (7\/1), 6-0.<\/p>\n
In the men’s draw, world number one Jannik Sinner held off 19-year-old wildcard Rafael Jodar to win 6-2, 7-6 (7\/0) in the quarterfinals.<\/p>\n
Sinner became the sixth player to reach the semifinals of all nine ATP 1000 Masters tournaments.<\/p>\n
The Italian saved five break points in \u200cthe second set to secure victory over the Spaniard.<\/p>\n
AP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Anastasia Potapova dropped to her knees, put both hands on her face and started crying. The “explosion of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":639378,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[111821,64,63,754,99748,309584,280666,83102,246282,9738,85,747,2637,26599],"class_list":["post-639377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-anastasia-potapova","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-jannik-sinner","tag-karolina-pliskova","tag-lucky-loser","tag-madrid-open","tag-quarterfinals","tag-rafael-jodar","tag-semifinals","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-wta","tag-wta-tour"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639377","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=639377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639377\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/639378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=639377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=639377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=639377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}