Jul 26, 2025, 08:42 PM ET<\/p>\n
WASHINGTON — Leylah Fernandez<\/a> will be trying to win her first WTA title of the season, and Anna Kalinskaya<\/a> will seek the first of her career when they meet each other in the final of the hard-court DC Open.<\/p>\n Fernandez, the runner-up at the 2021 US Open, hit 12 aces and picked up her second victory of the week against a top-20 opponent by beating 2022 Wimbledon champion Elena Rybakina<\/a> 6-7 (2), 7-6 (3), 7-6 (3) across 3 hours, 16 minutes in the semifinals Saturday.<\/p>\n Kalinskaya needed less than half as much time to eliminate Emma Raducanu<\/a> 6-4, 6-3 with the help of 14 backhand winners in the other women’s semifinal. It was Raducanu who defeated Fernandez for the championship at Flushing Meadows four years ago.<\/p>\n Both finalists are unseeded. Canada’s Fernandez, who is 22 years old, is ranked 36th; Russia’s Kalinskaya, 26, is ranked 48th.<\/p>\n Kalinskaya moved into her third tour-level final. She went 0-2 in title matches last season.<\/p>\n Fernandez, who got past top-seeded Jessica Pegula<\/a> earlier in the week, owns three titles. Sunday’s matchup will be her seventh career final.<\/p>\n No. 7 seed Alex de Minaur<\/a> advanced to his second Washington final by beating Corentin Moutet<\/a> 6-4, 6-3. De Minaur will face No. 12 Alejandro Davidovich Fokina<\/a>, who defeated No. 4 Ben Shelton<\/a> 6-2, 7-5 in the other semifinal.<\/p>\n The semifinal win was de Minaur’s 20th victory on a hard court in 2025, the most on the ATP tour. The Australian, who is 13th in the rankings, moved into his 19th career final; he’s 9-9 so far. One of the runner-up finishes came against Alexander Zverev<\/a> at Washington in 2018.<\/p>\n The Associated Press contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jul 26, 2025, 08:42 PM ET WASHINGTON — Leylah Fernandez will be trying to win her first WTA…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":40852,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":{"0":"post-40851","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40851","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40851"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40851\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}