Marketa Vondrousova beat world number one Aryna Sabalenka at the Berlin Open to reach her first final since winning the 2023 Wimbledon title. <\/b><\/p>\n
Vondrousova, who has been working her way back from shoulder surgery and is ranked 164th in the world, came through 6-2 6-4 and will play Chinese qualifier Wang Xinyu in Sunday’s showpiece in Germany.<\/p>\n
“I didn’t play for a long time. I am just happy to be back healthy and so grateful to play these matches,” Czech Vondrousova said on the WTA Tour website.<\/p>\n
“When I saw the field here, I was like, ‘OK, let’s just try to win the first round’ and then, you know, now this is happening.”<\/p>\n
Sabalenka saved two break points in the opening game but was broken in her second service game and again to trail 5-2 in the first set.<\/p>\n
The three-time Grand Slam champion sealed a break at the first time of asking to lead 2-0 in the second but Vondrousova hit back immediately.<\/p>\n
A tense scrap ensued with the set staying on serve until 25-year-old Vondrousova broke for 5-4 and then served out the match.<\/p>\n
Wang beat 2021 Berlin Open champion Liudmila Samsonova 6-4 6-1 in the other semi-final to reach her first WTA singles final.<\/p>\n
“This week has been a dream for me,” Wang said. “Coming into every match, I wasn’t expecting anything, it was really just to enjoy the stage.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Marketa Vondrousova beat world number one Aryna Sabalenka at the Berlin Open to reach her first final since…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":204024,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4105],"tags":[79,1068,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-204510","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-tennis","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114725707080040680","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204510"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204510\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/204024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}