TOKYO \u2014 Canada’s Leylah Fernandez advanced to the semifinals of the Pan Pacific Open on Friday after top-ranked Elena Rybakina withdrew from their quarterfinal because of an undisclosed injury.<\/p>\n
The 24-year-old from Laval, Que., has enjoyed a late-season surge, winning the Singapore Open in September and reaching the Ningbo Open final last Sunday, where she lost to Rybakina 6-2, 6-2.<\/p>\n
Fernandez climbed seven spots to No. 23 in the WTA rankings earlier this week following her run in Ningbo.<\/p>\n
Rybakina stood on the court in Tokyo and delivered the news to spectators. She said she had been struggling for several days \u201cwith a little injury\u201d and needed to be ready for next month’s WTA Finals in Indian Wells.<\/p>\n
She ended by saying, \u201cI hope to see you all next year.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fernandez will face Kamilla Rakhimova for a spot in the final after Rakhimova defeated Maya Joint 7-5, 5-7, 6-1.<\/p>\n
Rybakina guaranteed herself the year-end No. 1 ranking with her last-16 victory on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Ottawa’s Gabriela Dabrowski and Brazilian partner Luisa Stefani are also through to the semifinals in Tokyo.<\/p>\n
They will face Australia’s Joint and Storm Hunter for a spot in the doubles final.<\/p>\n
In other singles quarterfinals, No. 3-seeded Diana Shnaider recovered to beat No. 8 Alexandra Eala 2-6, 7-6 (5), 6-4.<\/p>\n
Shnaider will next face teenager Mia Pohankova, who beat Alycia Parks 7-6 (3), 6-3. Pohankova of Slovakia turned 18 last week and was a wild-card entry.<\/p>\n
— with files from The Canadian Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TOKYO \u2014 Canada’s Leylah Fernandez advanced to the semifinals of the Pan Pacific Open on Friday after top-ranked…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":952092,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-952091","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\/952091","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=952091"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/952091\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/952092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=952091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=952091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=952091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}