There may have been no two players more prolific at the Internazionali BNL d’Italia in recent years than Elina Svitolina and Iga Swiatek. The pair combined to win five titles in the last 10 editions of the tournament — but only one would return to the title match this year as they faced off in Thursday’s semifinals.<\/p>\n
Rome:\u00a0Scores<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Draws<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Order of play<\/a><\/p>\n And in the early hours past midnight on Friday at the Foro Italico, two-time champion Svitolina downed three-time winner Swiatek 6-2, 4-6, 6-2 in the semifinals to return to the title match for the first time since winning her back-to-back trophies in 2017-18. She will face Coco Gauff in the final — having beaten the American twice this year — as both women bid for their first WTA 1000 final of the season.<\/p>\n “The feeling is just unreal to be after so many years here again in the final,” Svitolina said after beating Swiatek in 2 hours and 14 minutes. “It\u2019s such an amazing feeling to do it in such a great way, I think.”<\/p>\n After saving 16 break points in her quarterfinal win against Elena Rybakina, the key to Svitolina’s victory was being similarly prolific in fending off Swiatek’s chances. She saved 11 of 16 break points in the semifinal, including all five she faced in the final set.\u00a0<\/p>\n She also was given ample chances by Swiatek. In three sets, the former World No. 1 racked up 50 unforced errors — to just 28 winners.<\/p>\n Svitolina has now beaten Swiatek twice this year, after also beating her in three sets in the quarterfinals at the BNP Paribas Open in March. She takes a 2-0 record this year into the final against Gauff, too, even though she trails that overall head-to-head 4-2.<\/p>\n \u201cI definitely have a game plan. Not now exactly, but I will have it,” the Ukrainian said. “We\u2019ve played many times. It\u2019s not a surprise. We both know the way we bring the fight. Our last match was something out of this world. I\u2019m gonna rewatch that to find the ways.. some tactics. I want to enjoy this win tonight. Tomorrow it\u2019s a day off.. so I can rest, prepare, and be ready for the final.\u201d<\/p>\n More to come…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There may have been no two players more prolific at the Internazionali BNL d’Italia in recent years than…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16158,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[27,4125],"class_list":{"0":"post-16157","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rome","8":"tag-rome","9":"tag-text"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16157"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16157\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}