In their debut as a team at the WTA Finals, No. 7 seeds Timea Babos and Luisa Stefani will play for the title after coming from a break down in both sets to defeat No. 6 seeds Hsieh Su-Wei and Jelena Ostapenko 6-4, 7-6(5) in the semifinals.<\/p>\n
WTA Finals: Scores<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Draws<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Order of play<\/a><\/p>\n It’s new ground for Babos and Stefani as a team — Stefani, who is playing the first WTA Finals of her career, becomes the first Brazilian to reach the final of the tournament in its history — but familiar territory for Babos. The Hungarian is a three-time WTA Finals champion and has now reached her fourth final with a third different partner.<\/p>\n She previously won with Andrea Sestini Hlavackova in 2017, and Kristina Mladenovic in 2018 and 2019 — memories that helped her as she helped deliver another victory here.<\/p>\n “I never lost in a semifinal of the WTA Finals before, so I’m just keeping that,” Babos said in her on-court interview. “I’m very proud of us.”<\/p>\n The in-form Babos and Stefani have also advanced to their fifth final of 2025 — and first above WTA 500 level — and third in a row following Ningbo (runners-up to Nicole Melichar-Martinez and Liudmila Samsonova) and Tokyo (champions).<\/p>\n In a first-time encounter, Babos and Stefani were the most consistent team throughout. Hsieh and Ostapenko led 3-1 in the first set and 4-2 in the second but were too up-and-down to press home their advantage either time. The Hungarian-Brazilian duo delivered spectacular defense on several key points, holding firm at net to repel both Ostapenko’s biggest blows and Hsieh’s most creative angles, leaving little space for their opponents to get past.<\/p>\n Hsieh and Ostapenko showed flickers of the magic they can produce — the Latvian found some accuracy to go with her power to break Stefani for 4-2 in the second set, and Hsieh’s touch came to the fore as they saved the first two match points against them trailing 5-4. In the ensuing tiebreak, they were also handed a lifeline from 5-2 down by a pair of nervy volley errors by Babos and Stefani.<\/p>\n But at 5-5, Ostapenko once again was unable to find a way through, netting a forehand for her team’s 43rd unforced error of the day, and Babos sealed her third match point with a service winner.<\/p>\n “Really tight in the score, and such a different game style than we’ve been playing in the past few days,” Stefani said afterward. “Two different faces, two different styles. We stayed together — Timi helped a lot in the first set, I felt I pushed us through the second, and we both helped each other this whole tournament.”<\/p>\n Kudermetova and Mertens save match point, upset Siniakova and Townsend en route to final<\/p>\n Three years ago, Veronika Kudermetova and Elise Mertens defeated Barbora Krejcikova and Katerina Siniakova in a match tiebreak to capture the Martina Navratilova Trophy in Fort Worth.\u00a0<\/p>\n Early Saturday morning, the duo returned to the WTA Finals championship match for the first time since, defeating Siniakova and Taylor Townsend in another match tiebreak, 4-6, 7-6 (6), [10-6] in 1 hour and 52 minutes in Riyadh after saving a match point in the second-set tiebreak.<\/p>\n The match ended just before 1:30 a.m. local time.<\/p>\n “It’s pretty late,” Mertens said after the match. “Thanks everyone for staying. It really makes a difference. We had to dig really deep against two incredible players. I’m very happy with the super tiebreak that we played. My partner was on fire there. Thanks to our team for cheering.”<\/p>\n Kudermetova indeed stepped up on several big points, saving match point with a volley in the second-set tiebreak and sealing the comeback with a smash winner.<\/p>\n Her turnaround followed a rocky start.<\/p>\n “When I started the match, I could not feel the rhythm,” she said. “The girls (Siniakova and Townsend) did an amazing job. They tried some things that were not really comfortable for me. But I was fighting a little bit with my husband and then I was angry. And then I woke up and I go, ‘OK, we go for it.'”<\/p>\n Siniakova and Townsend broke to open the match and again for a 5-2 lead in the first set. Kudermetova and Mertens broke back when the Australian Open champions served for the set but couldn’t complete the rally. The second set opened with another exchange of breaks, as the teams traded service games through the first four games before eventually reaching a tiebreak.<\/p>\n Siniakova and Townsend held match point at 6-5, but Kudermetova’s volley kept the title hopes alive. Moments later, a Kudermetova winner clinched the set to force a match tiebreak. From there, Kudermetova and Mertens raced to a 7-3 lead and closed out victory a few points later to advance to the final against Babos and Stefani.<\/p>\n The pairs met once earlier this season, with Kudermetova and Mertens winning in straight sets in Rome en route to the final.\u00a0<\/p>\n On the line Saturday is a second WTA Finals crown for Kudermetova and Mertens. Meanwhile, Babos is chasing her fourth, while Stefani, making her debut, seeks her first.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In their debut as a team at the WTA Finals, No. 7 seeds Timea Babos and Luisa Stefani…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":268982,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593,5452],"class_list":{"0":"post-268981","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-tennis","12":"tag-text"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=268981"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268981\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/268982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=268981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=268981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=268981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}