Stosur books place in WTA Championships semis
Samantha Stosur has sealed her place in the semi-finals of the WTA Tour Championships, despite losing to Elena Dementieva in 6-4, 4-6, 6-7 in her final round-robin match.
The Australian had entered today’s match needing only to secure one more set to reach the semis on her debut at the season-ending tournament, and that was all she got. Indeed Stosur looked to be on course to do so with relative ease when three Dementieva double faults in one game, including one on break point, gifted Stosur the 3-1 lead in the opening set.
The seventh seed though broke back to get proceedings back on serve at 3-4 as she began to show that the ankle injury that had forced her to withdraw from her second round match in Luxembourg last week, and which was clearly restricting her movement in her loss to Wozniacki in her opening match on Tuesday, had markedly improved with a day’s rest.
In the end though Stosur got the set she needed to progress beyond the round-robin stage but with everything still to play for as she sought to keep alive her challenge for the second semi-final place from the Maroon Group Dementieva wasn’t about to roll over and hand the Queenslander the match.
And so the scene was set for another tightly contested clash between the pair, who had last faced off in the fourth round of the US Open, where bleary eyed fans were treated to a two-hour-and-38-minute battle (won by Stosur) that ended as the latest-finishing women's match in US Open history.
Dementieva opened a 2-1 lead in the second set when she sent a forehand winner down the line to seal the break, with a service hold to love in the next game consolidating it nicely.
Errors though cost the 29-year-old dearly in the sixth game of the set as Stosur again lifted her game, and it was an authoritative forehand winner that ultimately handed her the break back to level the scores at 3-3.
But as Dementieva refused to give in, a poor service game from the French Open runner-up opened up the chance for the 2008 Olympic gold medallist to serve for the set at 5-4.
That didn’t look as though it would be the likely outcome after Dementieva went down 0-30 but she was allowed back into the game by a misfiring Stosur, though it was eventually a forehand winner down the line from Dementieva that won the game and forced the match into a deciding third set.
It was Stosur who had the first chance to take the ascendency but she couldn’t capitalise on the two break point opportunities she had in the second game of the set and games remained on serve into the deciding tiebreak, where Stosur’s errors continued to flow and Dementieva was able to seal the win on the third match point opportunity she had to do so.
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