Second-seeded Ekaterina Alexandrova dropped the first set but battled back to defeat Hailey Baptiste of the United States on Friday, 3-6, 7-6 (5), 6-3, to secure herself a spot in the Mubadala Abu Dhabi Open \u200bfinal in the United Arab Emirates.<\/p>\n
The Russian competitor saved a match point in the second set down 5-4, controlled her serve and \u200cwon the tiebreak before ultimately winning in the third set. Alexandrova<\/a> \u200csaved the final three break-point opportunities Baptiste<\/a> had in the game en route to her 13th career WTA Tour final<\/a>.<\/p>\n Sara Bejlek<\/a> of the Czech Republic pulled off the upset over Denmark’s third-seeded \u2060Clara Tauson<\/a> 7-5, 3-6, 7-5<\/a> to claim the other spot in the \u200cfinal. Bejlek, who had to come through qualifying to even make the \u200btournament, has dropped just one set in the main draw and will be competing in her first WTA final.<\/p>\n Ostrava Open<\/p>\n Great Britain’s Katie Boulter<\/a> cruised into the finals after taking down Katie Volynets<\/a> in straight sets, 6-1, 6-3,<\/a> in Ostrava, Czech Republic.<\/p>\n Boulter \u200cconverted five of her 11 break-point chances while being broken just once in seven opportunities on her serve. She won 69.7% of her first-service points, including going 11-for-12 in the first set.<\/p>\n Boulter \u2060will meet Tamara Korpatsch<\/a> in the final after the German also won in straight sets, downing France’s Diane Parry<\/a> 6-4, 6-4<\/a>. Despite yielding six double faults, Korpatsch saved 6 of 9 break points.<\/p>\n Transylvania Open<\/p>\n Great Britain’s Emma Raducanu<\/a> defended her No. 1 seed with a 7-5, 3-6, 6-3<\/a> win over Ukraine’s Oleksandra Oliynykova<\/a> to book a spot in the finals in Cluj-Napoca, Romania.<\/p>\n It was a back-and-forth affair that lasted 2 hours and 48 minutes and saw both Raducanu (73.7%) and Oliynykova (72.3%) post \u2060nearly identical first-serve percentages. Raducanu pressed for the win \u200cin the final set with six break opportunities and converted two of them to snap a six-match losing streak in deciding sets.<\/p>\n No. 3 seed Sorana Cirstea<\/a> won in a speedy 56 minutes to meet Raducanu in the final \u2060as she took down Ukraine’s Daria Snigur<\/a> 6-0, 6-3<\/a>. \u200bThe Romanian never lost her serve and broke Snigur four \u2060times.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Second-seeded Ekaterina Alexandrova dropped the first set but battled back to defeat Hailey Baptiste of the United States…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":460081,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-460080","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\/460080","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=460080"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460080\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/460081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=460080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=460080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=460080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}