Keys had raced to a 6-3, 3-1 lead with a break in the second set before Bejlek reeled off five of the next six games to force a decider. In the third, Bejlek held a lead of her own before Keys broke back to send the match into a tiebreak. There, Bejlek moved 2-1 up before Keys won four of the next five points to lead 4-2. Bejlek leveled at 4-4, only for Keys to edge ahead again at 5-4, before Bejlek drew level a second time at 5-5 and closed out the last two points to seal it 7-5.<\/p>\n
Sara Bejlek said after the match: \u201cI believe much more than I ever believed in myself. I just keep believing in the match no matter what, and that\u2019s probably the thing that\u2019s always in my head.\u201d<\/p>\n
At 20 years old, Bejlek has now beaten three Grand Slam champions in the space of a week: Barbora Krejcikova, Aryna Sabalenka and Keys. She reached this stage by beating Karolina Pliskova 6-0, 6-2, No 23 seed Krejcikova 7-6 (5), 6-4, No 16 seed Ekaterina Alexandrova 4-6, 6-1, 6-2, and top seed Sabalenka 7-6 (7), 6-4, a run that has taken her from Cincinnati debutante to first-time WTA 1000 semi-finalist. <\/p>\n
Bejlek will next face the winner of the match between American Coco Gauff, the No 4 seed, and Ukrainian Marta Kostyuk, the No 10 seed.<\/p>\n
Cincinnati WTA 1000,\u00a0QUARTER FINALS<\/p>\n
S. Bejlek\u00a0vs. M. Keys (19): 3-6, 6-4, 7-6 (5) <\/p>\n
C. Gauff (4)\u00a0vs. M. Kostyuk (10)\u00a0<\/p>\n
J. Pegula (3)\u00a0d. A. Anisimova (9): 6-4, 2-6, 7-6(4)<\/p>\n
I. Swiatek (7)\u00a0vs. E. Rybakina (2): 4-1, ret.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Keys had raced to a 6-3, 3-1 lead with a break in the second set before Bejlek reeled…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":745663,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-745662","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\/745662","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=745662"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745662\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/745663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=745662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=745662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=745662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}