ROME \u2014 Three-time champion Iga Swiatek beat\u00a0Jessica Pegula\u00a0of the United States in straight sets on Wednesday to advance to\u00a0the Italian Open\u00a0semifinals.<\/p>\n
The fourth-ranked Swiatek needed just 67 minutes to sweep aside No. 5 Pegula 6-1, 6-2.<\/p>\n
Swiatek\u2019s impressive form bodes well for the upcoming French Open, which she has won four times.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m happy that I can spend some time on the court and play really solid matches against the best girls,\u201d Swiatek said. “For sure it\u2019s giving me confidence because you can practice as much as possible, but if you don\u2019t test it out on the court, play matches and face pressure or something, you\u2019re going to still feel the little bit rusty when it comes.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow I\u2019m happy I played couple matches. I\u2019ll play hopefully two more here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Swiatek will next face either Elena Rybakina or Elina Svitolina, who are both also former Rome champions.<\/p>\n
In the men\u2019s quarterfinals, two impressive sets from Casper Ruud saw the Norwegian overcome 13th-ranked Karen Khachanov 6-1, 1-6, 6-2.<\/p>\n
The match was suspended for more than two hours at the start of the second set because of rain and Khachanov seemed to have dealt better with the enforced break.<\/p>\n
However, the 23rd-ranked Ruud broke Khachanov’s serve twice at the start of the third set and then again to take the match on the second of three match points.<\/p>\n
Ruud will face either 19-year-old Rafael Jodar of Spain or Italian player Luciano Darderi in the semifinals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ROME \u2014 Three-time champion Iga Swiatek beat\u00a0Jessica Pegula\u00a0of the United States in straight sets on Wednesday to advance…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":668327,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-668326","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\/668326","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=668326"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668326\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/668327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=668326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=668326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=668326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}