World number two Simona Halep continued her preparations for next week’s Australian Open by booking a semi-final berth at the Sydney International with a gritty straight-sets win over Karolina Pliskova on Wednesday. The rising Frenchwoman was more than enough to keep her busy (Halep eventually prevailed after a brilliant third set, 6-4, 2-6, 6-1), but the nagging Achilles injury that sidelined her in Brisbane reared its ugly head again.
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The trio’s withdrawals came after injury problems at other Australian tournaments for the world’s top-ranked stars – including Serena Williams with a knee ailment, Garbine Muguruza who hurt her foot and Maria Sharapova who injured her forearm. “But I like to play against her. I have had good matches with her before and I expect another tough one”.
She dropped only one point in the first-set tie-breaker against former French Open finalist Sara Errani in Wednesday’s quarter-final, played in steamy conditions in Sydney’s west.
Alexandr Dolgopolov made light work of Thomaz Bellucci in his 6-1 6-4 victory but Nicolas Mahut was made to sweat in his 6-4 7-5 win over fellow Frenchman Adrian Mannarino. “When you have pain you always get scared because you don’t know what is going to happen”. I know she’s been playing tough, she’s playing well, and she’s strong with her serve, and I expected she was going to hit the balls well today.
Looking ahead to next week’s Australian Open, Bouchard said: “I still feel like I’m far off personally, but it’s not too bad”. “The weather was pretty warm and it was tough for me to handle it today”.
Pliskova eased past Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova 6-3 6-0 while Switzerland’s Belinda Bencic also had little issues in beating Tsvetana Pironkova 6-3 6-3.
Four-time champion David Ferrer, meanwhile, beat Australian qualifier Matthew Barton 6-2, 6-4 to reach the quarterfinals of the event for the 10th time in 11 appearances. Stosur was runner-up at the tournament in 2005.
On a rain-disrupted second day that saw no matches completed during the day session, Bautista Agut made up time in the evening by taking just 76 minutes to dispose of Vesely 6-3, 7-5.
The former world number five, whose ranking has dipped to 47 after a fall at the US Open scuppered the end of her 2015 season, fought through to down Belgian Alison Van Uytvanck 6-4, 7-5.
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Lukas Rosol beat Guillermo Garcia-Lopez 7-6(5) 6-4 while Philipp Kohlschreiber overcame fellow German Benjamin Becker 7-6(8) 6-3, but Aljaz Bedene was forced to retire with injury while trailing Sam Querrey 6-7(5) 7-6(10) 2-1.
