Aug 1 (Reuters) – Top-seeded American Jessica Pegulabeat \u2060Russia’s Diana Shnaider 7-5 6-4 on Saturday and set up a Washington Open final against \u2060the Philippines’ Alexandra Eala, who defeated Japan’s Naomi Osaka 6-4 6-2.<\/p>\n
World number three Pegula \u200cis seeking her third title of the year and 12th of her career after winning in Dubai and Charleston. The 32-year-old won her first WTA title in Washington in 2019.<\/p>\n
The 22-year-old Shnaider, who reached this year’s French Open semi-finals, was bidding for \u200bher sixth WTA title. She raced into a 5-2 lead \u2060in the opening set, but Pegula began \u2060her comeback by holding serve before breaking in the ninth game.<\/p>\n
The American then held to love to \u2060level \u200cthe set at 5-5, broke again in the next game and served out the set when Shnaider sent a forehand wide.<\/p>\n
Pegula broke for a 3-2 lead in the second set \u2060and extended her advantage to 5-2 with another break before closing \u200bout the match with a \u200cforehand winner after 87 minutes.<\/p>\n
“I just capitalised on a couple of areas,” Pegula said. “I think \u2060I started just \u200btrying to find the rhythm on the return. I didn’t think I was that far off … So, just trying to pick up my energy and again, try and be a little bit more aggressive.”<\/p>\n
Eala moved within one win \u2060of her first WTA title after delivering a composed performance \u200bagainst four-times Grand Slam champion Osaka.<\/p>\n
The 21-year-old, playing in her third semi-final this year, reached the last four after beating second seed Elina Svitolina for her sixth win of the season over a top-10 opponent.<\/p>\n
Eala, \u2060who made the fourth round at Wimbledon last month, broke Osaka in the ninth game of the opening set after they had been level at 4-4, then held to love to take the opener.<\/p>\n
She carried that momentum into the second, breaking in the opening game and again to move 4-2 ahead before \u200bsealing victory without dropping a set during her run to the \u2060final.<\/p>\n
“I think I played really well and, of course, it’s such a meaningful match against a great player.So \u200breally happy to share the court with Naomi,” Eala said.<\/p>\n
“I’m \u200cin the final for a reason. I just have \u200bto trust myself.\u2029She (Pegula) is such an amazing player. I think it’s going to be a really good match,” she added.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Angelica Medina in Mexico City; Editing by Ken Ferris)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Aug 1 (Reuters) – Top-seeded American Jessica Pegulabeat \u2060Russia’s Diana Shnaider 7-5 6-4 on Saturday and set up…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":838788,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,6675,85,747],"class_list":["post-838787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-na","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/838787","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=838787"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/838787\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/838788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=838787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=838787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=838787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}