American Madison Keys will face Czech Barbora Strycova in the final of the Aegon Classic in Birmingham on Sunday.
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The win means Keys will next week break into the world’s top 10 for the first time in her career.
Keys will meet Carla Saurez Navarro in the semifinals.
“I heard about the top 10 ranking from my coach but tried to pretend I didn’t know about it”, said Keys. “But I’m really happy with the way I finished the match”. She took a 2-0 lead, but Keys would mount a strong rally to reclaim the break and move ahead by taking four straight games for a 4-2 lead.
Birmingham-Defending champion Angelique Kerber made a typically tenacious comeback from a set down and a day’s delay to reach the quarter-finals of the Wimbledon warm-up event in Birmingham on Friday. Serena is now ranked No. 1 and her sister Venus Williams is No. 9.
It slid wide and put her match point down at 3-6.
The two tournaments are very different in their environments, but with Strycova having been active in the singles and the doubles, perhaps Keys will be the fresher.
The seventh-seeded Keys showed intermittent brilliance mixed with unforced errors in her fiercely uncompromising game, which Keys described as “a balancing act between going for the right shot at the right time and being more consistent”. Coco was playing really well in the first set and really fast and I had to just hang in there.
This too was an utterly unpredictable match.
The occasion seemed to get to Vandeweghe, who burst into tears while sitting in her chair in the final set.
She said: “It was a rollercoaster, I have to say”.
“So it was a big thing for me just to come out and really be a lot more positive and have a high level of intensity and energy”. Strycova, still apparently fresh after an exasperating on-off week, increasingly proved calmly and consistently effective.
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Keys won her first title in Eastbourne in 2014, defeating Angelique Kerber in a windswept final – so is this her best surface?
