BEIJING, China, Oct 8 (Reuters) \u2013 Russian fourth seed Mirra Andreeva overcame compatriot Ekaterina Alexandrova 7-6(4) 7-6(3) on Thursday to reach the China Open semi-finals where she will face Czech Nikola Bartunkova in a young-guns showdown at \u200bthe WTA 1000 event in Beijing.<\/p>\n
French Open champion Andreeva, 19, broke 19th \u200cseed Alexandrova to move 2-0 ahead before falling 5-3 behind in a fluctuating opening set as both players struggled to hold serve. The teenager, however, recovered to edge the tiebreak.<\/p>\n
Andreeva seemed firmly on course for victory in the second, leading 4-1 and serving for the match at 5-3 before Alexandrova, \u200c31, \u200bstaged a late fightback to force another tiebreak.<\/p>\n
Andreeva took \u2060control of the tiebreak with \u2060a forehand winner for a 3-2 lead and won five of the final six points to seal victory and reach her first Beijing semi-final.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven when I had an advantage in the second set leading 5-2, I felt like she was \u200bstill pressuring me,\u201d Andreeva said in her post-match interview.<\/p>\n
\u201cI felt like she was playing better and I did not take my chances. I could have played more \u2060aggressive.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut what a match this was. I\u2019m super \u2060happy with how it went. She played unbelievable today, and I\u2019m \u200bvery happy to get my very first win against her.\u201d<\/p>\n
BARTUNKOVA CRUSHES MUCHOVA<\/p>\n
Earlier on Thursday, \u200b26th seed Bartunkova reached her first WTA 1000 semi-final with a dominant \u200c6-3 6-0 victory over fellow Czech and seventh seed Karolina Muchova in 67 minutes.<\/p>\n
Bartunkova, 20, controlled the contest from start to finish, winning five consecutive games to begin the match and the final seven games to complete the rout of Wimbledon runner-up Muchova, \u2060who is 10 years her senior.<\/p>\n
\u201cI follow her (Muchova) a lot,\u201d Bartunkova said. \u201cI have also similar style like her \u2013 playing lot of drop shots, volleys.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bartunkova continued her impressive run in Beijing \u2060after stunning four-times Grand \u200cSlam champion Aryna Sabalenka in the last 32.<\/p>\n
Bartunkova will make \u2060her top 30 debut after the tournament.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor sure (I did not expect \u200bit) \u200cbefore this tournament,\u201d Bartunkova told a press conference. \u201cI played lot \u200bof practices with \u2060top players \u2013 (Iga) Swiatek, (Coco) Gauff and others. Maybe it helps a little bit. It was one week before the tournament.<\/p>\n
\u201cI tried to play a lot of practices, lot of matches. I think that was the reason I had good preparation for this tournament. I had confidence. But honestly I didn\u2019t expect these results.\u201d<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Pearl Josephine Nazare in Bengaluru; \u200bEditing by Ken Ferris)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BEIJING, China, Oct 8 (Reuters) \u2013 Russian fourth seed Mirra Andreeva overcame compatriot Ekaterina Alexandrova 7-6(4) 7-6(3) on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":925446,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-925445","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\/925445","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=925445"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/925445\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/925446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=925445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=925445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=925445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}