{"id":734687,"date":"2026-08-11T15:58:14","date_gmt":"2026-08-11T15:58:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/734687\/"},"modified":"2026-08-11T15:58:14","modified_gmt":"2026-08-11T15:58:14","slug":"swiatek-to-face-svitolina-in-canadian-open-semi-finals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/734687\/","title":{"rendered":"Swiatek to face Svitolina in Canadian Open semi-finals"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former world number one Iga Swiatek raced into the Toronto Masters semi-finals on Monday, taking just 64 minutes to sweep past Russian Diana Shnaider 6-2, 6-1.<\/p>\n

Poland’s Swiatek<\/a>, a six-time Grand Slam champion, reached just her second WTA semi-final this year after Rome and seeks her first final since winning the Korea Open almost a year ago in Seoul.<\/p>\n

will face either Ukraine’s Elina Svitolina<\/a> or Russia’s seed Ekaterina Alexandrova<\/a> on Wednesday for a place in the final.<\/p>\n

“From the beginning I went for it. I felt like I could dominate,” Swiatek said. “I was quite happy with the way I played.”<\/p>\n

The 25-year-old world number eight from Warsaw will on Wednesday face Ukraine’s ninth-ranked Elina Svitolina<\/a>, who rallied past 19th-ranked Ekaterina Alexandrova<\/a> 3-6, 6-0, 6-3<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“It was a tricky match with the wind,” said Swiatek. “It was the first chance I had to play in the wind since I got here. I thought I needed to adjust to that. I just wanted to be more solid.”<\/p>\n

Swiatek dropped only three points on her first serve and took 11 of 16 points returning Shnaider<\/a>‘s second serves.<\/p>\n

Shnaider, a left-hander, swatted a backhand over the baseline to surrender a break in the opening game. But Swiatek\u00a0took a 5-2<\/a> lead, breaking again when Shnaider netted a backhand, and served out to take the first set in 31 minutes.<\/p>\n

Swiatek broke for a 2-1 lead in the second when Shnaider netted a forehand.\u00a0She smashed a forehand winner to break a second time for a 4-1 advantage and again in the final game when Shnaider sent a forehand long.<\/p>\n

Svitolina rallies<\/p>\n

Svitolina won eight consecutive games in the second and third sets to dispatch her Russian rival in 93 minutes.<\/p>\n

Svitolina sent a backhand long to drop serve to love in the final game of the first set, Alexandrova taking it after 29 minutes with 12 winners to only three by Svitolina.<\/p>\n

In the second set, Alexandrova sent a forehand long and netted two backhands to hand Svitolina three breaks.<\/p>\n

Svitolina served for the match in the eighth game of the final set but double-faulted away a break, only to break back to love in the last game, smashing a service return winner to end it.<\/p>\n

Now, she moves to the semis to face Swiatek, who leads 4-3 in their WTA career rivalry but lost both their meetings this year.<\/p>\n

“Very pleased with my performance. With the fighting spirit,” said Svitolina.\u00a0“She was playing really well in the first set. I had to really step into like a fighting mode.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former world number one Iga Swiatek raced into the Toronto Masters semi-finals on Monday, taking just 64 minutes…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":734688,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-734687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/734687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=734687"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/734687\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/734688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=734687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=734687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=734687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}