French Open: Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova celebrates comeback victory against Elena Rybakina and is in the semifinals
Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova is in the semi-finals of the French Open after a contested three-set win overElena Rybakina. In this she meets Tamara Zidansek on Thursday.
by Nikolaus Fink
last edit: Jun 08, 2021, 05:39 pm
After numerous surprises in the first week of the tournament, the 21-year-old Elena Rybakina started the quarter-finals on Tuesday as the highest remaining player in the lower half. But also for opponent Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova there was a great opportunity, the designated semi-final opponent Tamara Zidansek is currently only on position 85 in the world rankings.
The two protagonists on the Philippe-Chatrier court did not notice the nervousness, however, both Rybakina and Pavlyuchenkova showed strong performances in the first round and provided their basic strokes with an enormous amount of speed. In the tie-break it was the Kazakh woman who acted a little more resolutely and deservedly won the short decision 7-2.
Up and down in the third movement
Pavlyuchenkova didn’t let that bother him and hit back in the second section in an impressive way: From the score of 2: 2, the 29-year-old bagged four games in a row and thus also sent the second women's quarter-finals of the day in an all-important third sentence.
In this, the Russian quickly took a 2-0 lead, but Rybakina struck back and was ahead with a break after five games. The game was far from over. Pavlyuchenkova took the serve from her opponent, who was eight years younger than her, and equalized to 3: 3.
Surprise semi-final against Zidansek
After that, both players played their service games, but in the 16th game Rybakina, who had acted so calmly in the round of 16 against Serena Williams, stumbled. Pavlyuchenkova took advantage of this short period of weakness of the Kazakh mercilessly and yanked her hands up after a little more than two and a half hours after a double mistake by the Kazakh.
After the 6: 7 (2), 6: 2 and 9: 7 success, the world number 32 hits. in the semifinals on Thursday now on Tamara Zidansek. The Slovenian had also asserted herself in three tight sets in the first game of the day against Paula Badosa .
Here the single tableau in Roland Garros
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