Marta Kostyuk defeated No. 13 seed Linda Noskova 7-6 (1), 6-0 in 1 hour and 27 minutes Wednesday night to extend the best stretch of her career and advance to the Madrid semifinals for the first time. It goes in the books as a dominant victory for the Ukrainian, who seized control in the first-set tiebreaker and never let go on a night when conditions were far from ideal.<\/p>\n
“Conditions were incredibly difficult for both of us,” Kostyuk said in her on-court interview. “It was very windy, very cold and I felt like we started to gain some (momentum) only towards the end of the first set. Until then, I think we both weren’t sure where the ball was going sometimes. But I’m happy that I did my strategy today very well.”<\/p>\n
Madrid:\u00a0Scores<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Draws<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Order of play<\/a><\/p>\n Next, she’ll face lucky loser Anastasia Potapova for a spot in her first WTA 1000 final. Kostyuk is 2-2 against Potapova at the WTA Tour Driven by Mercedes-Benz level, but she has won their last two meetings in straight sets, including their most recent encounter last year in Madrid. Mirra Andreeva and Hailey Baptiste will meet in the other semifinal.<\/p>\n And while each of the last four has a claim to being the tournament favorite — Andreeva won Linz, Baptiste just beat Aryna Sabalenka, and Potapova upset Rybakina — don\u2019t overlook Kostyuk. She lifted the trophy in Rouen earlier this month and, with Wednesday’s win, improved to 9-0 this clay season.<\/p>\n Not to mention, even when accounting for the men’s singles draw, Kostyuk is the only player to reach this year’s semifinal at the Mutua Madrid Open without conceding a set.<\/p>\n More to come…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Marta Kostyuk defeated No. 13 seed Linda Noskova 7-6 (1), 6-0 in 1 hour and 27 minutes Wednesday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14128,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[82,483],"class_list":{"0":"post-14127","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-madrid","8":"tag-madrid","9":"tag-text"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14127"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14127\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}