History as Ostapenko soars into Paris final
Print Edition
LATVIAN Jelena Ostapenko blazed a trail into the French Open final with a 7-6 (4), 3-6, 6-3 victory over Swiss Timea Bacsinszky in a battle of the birthday girls yesterday.
On the day she turned 20 the free-swinging world No. 47 launched a fusillade of winners to become the first unseeded player to reach the women’s singles final at Roland Garros since Mima Jausovec lost to Chris Evert in 1983.
A match of wildly fluctuating fortunes, with barely a service hold in sight, appeared to be slipping away from Ostapenko when she lost four games in a row to lose the second set against Bacsinszky, who was hoping to celebrate her 28th birthday by going one better than her semifinal run in 2015.
But Ostapenko played fearlessly in the decider and pounded away a 50th clean winner to become the first Latvian player to reach a grand slam final.
She will face either 2014 Roland Garros runner-up Simona Halep, the third-seeded Romanian, or second seed Karolina Pliskova of the Czech Republic for the title tomorrow.
Earlier, India’s Rohan Bopanna and Canada’s Gabriela Dabrowski saved two match points to claim their first Grand Slam title with victory in the mixed doubles final.
The seventh seeds defeated Anna-Lena Groenefeld of Germany and Colombia’s Robert Farah 2-6, 6-2, 12-10 in the final.
But they did it the hard way, coming back from a set and break down as well as trailing 7-9 in the super tiebreak where they faced two match points.
It was a first Slam title for both the 37-year-old Bopanna and his 25-year-old partner from Ontario.
Bopanna is only the fourth Indian player to win a major title after Sania Mirza, Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi.
Bopanna said victory was particularly special as it came 20 years after Bhupathi had teamed with Japan’s Rika Hiraki to win the mixed crown in Paris.
The pair only teamed up at the US Open last year and made the quarter-finals at the Australian Open.
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