AUCKLAND, New Zealand (AP) \u2014 Top-seeded Elina Svitolina will play in the final of the WTA Tour event in Auckland for the second time after beating American teenager Iva Jovic 7-6 (5), 6-2 in a semifinal Saturday.<\/p>\n
The 13th-ranked Svitolina also reached the final in 2024 when she lost to American Coco Gauff.<\/p>\n
Svitolina\u2019s opponent in Sunday\u2019s final will be seventh-seeded Wang Xinju of China, who beat fourth-seeded Alexandra Eala of the Philippines 5-7, 7-5, 6-4 in the other semifinal.<\/p>\n
Svitolina looked a little weary at first Saturday after an almost three-hour quarterfinal against Sonay Katal on Friday night, which she won 6-4, 6-7 (2), 7-6 (5).<\/p>\n
She dropped serve twice in the first three games Saturday to trail 3-0 against the 35th-ranked Jovic, the eight-ranked American on the WTA Tour. Svitolina broke back twice to level at 4-4, then dropped serve again allowing Jovic to serve for the first set at 5-4.<\/p>\n
But Jovic lost her serve to love and Svitolina took the set to a tiebreak in which she led 6-1 before taking the set on her third opportunity.<\/p>\n
She made short work of the second set, breaking Jovic in the third and fifth games and sealing the match with two aces in her final service game. <\/p>\n
Svitolina has been supported all week by her husband Gael Monfils, who will play in the men\u2019s tour event in Auckland starting Monday.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s nice to get a straight-sets win,\u201d Svitolina said. \u201cYesterday was a big battle and today as well in the first set. Iva was playing really well and I had to really fight back, dig deep and try to find my level and I\u2019m very happy to be able to finish this match in two sets to save some energy for the finals.\u201d<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP tennis: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/tennis<\/p>\n
The Associated Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AUCKLAND, New Zealand (AP) \u2014 Top-seeded Elina Svitolina will play in the final of the WTA Tour event…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":401892,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-401891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401891","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=401891"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401891\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/401892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=401891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=401891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=401891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}