Madison Keys will meet last year’s runner-up Simona Halep in the Rogers Cup final today after ending Kristina Kucova’s fairytale run in Montreal.
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“It s going to be tough”, Kerber said. “It was the first tournament on hard courts, so it’s good to have a lot of matches before going to Rio (for the Olympics)”.
“It feels nice that 40 years later I won here in Montreal. Hopefully it will stay like this”.
Second-seeded Angelique Kerber of Germany beat Ukraine’s Elina Svitolina 1-6, 7-6 (2), 6-4.
Konta was left to rue her wastefulness, only converting one of five break-point opportunities in her straight-sets loss to Kucova.
“I think I’m still recovering from the second set”, Pavlyuchenkova said.
In last year’s final in Toronto, Halep retired in the third set with an illness, handing the win to unseeded Belinda Bencic of Switzerland.
Prediction: I’ll take Kerber to beat Halep in three sets.
“She hits the ball very strong”, Halep said about Keys. And Kerber did it without a twinge from the elbow that forced her to withdraw from a match last week in Sweden. We’ve played a lot of good matches in the past.
“I’m really looking forward to playing against Simona again”. Thank you for supporting me, I know it’s not always easy. I think it was too much pressure on me.
Halep had some unfinished business to take care of at this tournament after reaching the final for the second straight year.
There were more empty seats than usual for a semifinal on centre court, but a large contingent of flag-waving Romanian fans turned out to back Halep.
The Romanian also won the titles in Bucharest and Madrid earlier this season, and she now has 14 career titles.
The match pitted two of the Tour’s in-form players against one another, Halep having won 22 of her past 25 matches and Keys 21 of her past 24. “I couldn’t resist at that rhythm. To hit the ball, because I started to push it”.
After seeing off Kuznetsova, Halep said: “It was very tough, I feel really exhausted now, she played very well and she’s very strong so I knew it was going to be like this”.
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“I think I did it pretty well, and she missed shots. I knew I had to go for it, take chances and be a little bit risky to win against her”. “No expectations. Just go in there and to fight for it”. They lost to the fourth-seeded Russian duo of Ekaterina Makarova and Elena Vesnina 6-3, 7-6 (5). The American duo of Christina McHale and Asia Muhammad upset top-seeded Martina Hingis and Sania Mirza.
