Final Four set in Bali
Defending champion of the CommonwealthBank Tournament of Champions, France’s Aravene Rezai, has no chance of repeating as she fell in her opening match in straight sets to Alisa Kleybanova from Russia, 6-1 and 6-2. Kleybanova’s win puts her through
to the semi-finals on Saturday and further advances her goals of winning the final tournament of the year.
Rezai was not in step for the match; even though she made five aces, she also double faulted five times, and only won 19% of her second serve points. Conversely, Kleybanova made four aces with only three double faults and won 61% of her second serve points.
"My type of game is to attack and pushing forward and putting pressure all the time, and I couldn’t do that because I didn’t have confidence. She did that and was inside the court all the time and I was like two metres out. That’s the reason she could play
faster and faster." Rezai said of her opponent after the match, according to commbanktennis.com.
The other quarter-final match had Slovakian Daniela Hantuchova winning in straight sets over Yanina Wickmayer of Belgium, 6-4 and 7-6. Hantuchova continued her dominance over Wickmayer and pushed herself through to the semi-finals.
Wickmayer’s demise came on her serve, as she double-faulted eight times throughout the match and only was able to win 26% of her second serve points. Hantuchova capitalized on this and served up six aces and only double-faulted three times.
"I thought it was a very high level match," said Hantuchova after her fifth victory in five matches against the Belgian according to commbanktennis.com. "Yanina was playing very well, as she always does, and again I was proud to keep my winning record against
her. It was tough at times but I kept calm and kept going for the right shots. It’s important on this surface to be very tactically smart. It helped to know that I have beaten her in the past but you still have to focus and perform well on the day. In this
tournament I have nothing to lose. Every win for me is great."
The semi-finals are now set for Saturday with one of them featuring Daniela Hantuchova against Alisa Kleybanova. Their head-to-head record is tied at one a piece, so it will be a winner-take-all for the season tomorrow between them.
The second semi-final will be between Serbian Ana Ivanovic and Japan’s Kimiko Date Krumm. These two have never met before in WTA action, so it will be a deciding match for a position in the finals on Sunday.
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