Simona Halep of Romania reacts after defeating Madison Keys of the United States during the final of the Rogers Cup tennis tournament at Uniprix Stadium August 1, 2016.
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Once Halep shook off some early nerves, she was able to pressure the Russian veteran s serve and was rewarded when Kuznetsova surrendered an early break in the second set with a double fault.
In the day’s other quarterfinals, World No.121 Kristina Kucova’s fairytale run continued on Friday night with a straight set win over 15th seeded Johanna Konta.
Keys broke again in the sixth game before serving out the match to love, with fifth seed Halep awaiting on Sunday. The most recent match was in this year’s Wimbledon, a match Halep won in three sets.
Kerber, ranked No. 2 in the world, lost to new world No. 3 Halep in the semifinals at Montreal.
“She hits very strong and it’s really tough to return her balls but I knew that I have to be strong on my legs”, counter puncher Halep said of her strategy against Keys.
“In the third set I just said that I have to calm down”, Halep said.
Halep is on a nine-match winning run, having won her home tournament in Bucharest two weeks ago.
“I think I did it pretty well, and she missed shots”.
“It’s going to be a tough match”, Keys said about Pavlyuchenkova.
The market makes the Romanian the strong favourite going into this one, and it’s no real surprise given the level of tennis that she’s been playing this past week. For the match, she put 55 per cent of her first serves in play and won a disappointing 51 per cent of those points.
Halep gave credit to her opponent for taking her out of her comfort zone.
“She had a very emotional week”, said the Rock Island native Keys.
Flying high after beating seven-time grand-slam champion Venus Williams to win her first WTA Tour title in California last week, Konta was barely given a sniff against Kucova in her bid to crack the top 10.
“I’ll say it’s the same as (against Williams) – I backed off in the second set and in the third set I had to step up”, said Keys.
“I was a little bit nervous at the beginning of the match and I didn’t really feel the ball”.
Second-seeded Angelique Kerber of Germany beat Ukraine’s Elina Svitolina 1-6, 7-6 (2), 6-4.
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Djokovic’s 6-3, 7-5 win over Nishikori came after a short rain delay and was his fourth Rogers Cup championship, still short of Ivan Lendl’s record of six.
