Wawrinka sinks French hopes
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STAN Wawrinka took on Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and 15,000 of his most passionate fans and silenced them all to reach the French Open final for the first time with a 6-3 6-7(1) 7-6(3) 6-4 victory in Paris yesterday.
Tsonga’s hopes of becoming the first Frenchman to win the title since Yannick Noah in 1983 melted away on the hottest day of the championships — with the mercury hitting 33 degrees Celsius — as Wawrinka won the points that mattered.
The Swiss eighth seed lived dangerously throughout, saving 16 of the 17 break points he faced during the gruelling three hour 46 minute contest, and was a mightily relieved man when he fired down an unreturnable serve to end the semifinal.
The 2014 Australian Open champion will face either world No. 1 Novak Djokovic or third seed Andy Murray in tomorrow’s final. He lost just two sets along the way.
The last Frenchman to reach the final was Henri Leconte in 1988.
“It was a huge battle, very difficult physically, a lot of intensity on both sides and it could have gone either way,” Wawrinka said. “He had chances to break me in the third set, but he had a great tournament and deserves just as much as me to be in the final.”
The semifinalists, both aged 30, had met twice before at Roland Garros, each winning in five sets, but their most recent encounter was a superb four sets Davis Cup final win for Wawrinka in November.
That sent Tsonga’s form into a tailspin made all the worse by a bad wrist injury that sidelined him until March.
But Roland Garros saw him back to near his best, defeating fourth seed Tomas Berdych and fifth seed Kei Nishikori to reach the semis for the second time.
Meanwhile, Serena Williams is overwhelming favorite to win her third French Open today but Czech Lucie Safarova will sense a rare opportunity.
World No. 1 Williams, 33, could not practise yesterday as she was still suffering from an illness that left her coughing and spluttering during her three-set semifinal win over Swiss Timea Bacsinszky.
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