World number three Iga Swiatek powered to a straight-set win over Elena Rybakina to reach the final of the Cincinnati Open where she will face Jasmine Paolini.<\/p>\n
Their meeting will be a repeat of last year’s French Open final – won by Poland’s Swiatek in dominant fashion.<\/p>\n
Swiatek, the reigning Wimbledon champion, swept past Kazakhstan’s Rybakina 7-5 6-3 on Sunday to reach her first Cincinnati showpiece.<\/p>\n
Rybakina – who beat world number one Aryna Sabalenka in the quarter-finals – started brightly but failed to exploit an early break in the first set before Swiatek took control. <\/p>\n
“That was a tough match,” said Swiatek. “At the beginning it was pretty crazy, we played so fast that sometimes we couldn’t even run to the second ball. <\/p>\n
“I was there to play with intensity and good quality and I am super happy with the performance.<\/p>\n
“It will be super tough in the final. I will have to prepare tactically but I will focus on myself and try to continue the work I have been doing.”<\/p>\n
Italy’s Paolini battled past Russian Veronika Kudermetova in her semi-final 6-3 6-7 (2-7) 6-3.<\/p>\n
Paolini served for the match in the second set only to see her advantage slip away, but the story of the encounter was Kudermetova’s tally of 75 unforced errors.<\/p>\n
The final takes place on Monday night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"World number three Iga Swiatek powered to a straight-set win over Elena Rybakina to reach the final of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":74026,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-74225","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-tennis","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74225","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=74225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74225\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}