LONDON, July 8 (Reuters) \u2013 Linda Noskova became the second Czech woman into this year\u2019s Wimbledon semi-finals, \u200bbeating Elise Mertens of Belgium \u200c6-3 7-5 in an under-the-radar matchup on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The ninth seed, who has been rising stealthily up the rankings this \u200cyear, \u200bpummelled the experienced \u2060Mertens, 30, with \u2060powerful returns, pinpoint groundstrokes and the occasional surprising drop shot in baking lunchtime heat on Court One.<\/p>\n
Mertens, \u200bsix times a Grand Slam doubles champion and seeded 25th \u2060in the singles \u2060here, had to work \u200bhard for her service games, saving \u200bnine break points.<\/p>\n
The 21-year-old Noskova broke \u200cher stubborn resistance in the eighth game of the first set and 11th of the second \u2060and served out the win with a big serve that the Belgian could only \u2060send \u200cwide, to reach her \u2060first Grand Slam semi-final.<\/p>\n
Noskova \u200bjoins \u200ccompatriot Karolina Muchova in Thursday\u2019s \u200bsemi-finals. She \u2060will face Ukraine\u2019s Marta Kostyuk, who beat Jasmine Paolini of Italy, for a place in Saturday\u2019s final.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Clare Lovell, editing by \u200bPritha Sarkar)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONDON, July 8 (Reuters) \u2013 Linda Noskova became the second Czech woman into this year\u2019s Wimbledon semi-finals, \u200bbeating…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":788602,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-788601","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\/788601","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=788601"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788601\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/788602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=788601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=788601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=788601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}