Nobody beats Cristina Bucsa 11 times in a row.\u00a0The 28-year-old Spaniard advanced to her first WTA 500 final at the M\u00e9rida Open on Saturday night courtesy of a 7-5. 6-4 win over No. 1 seed Jasmine Paolini — her first career Top 10 win.<\/p>\n
Merida:\u00a0Scores<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Draws<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Order of play<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Bucsa had previously lost all 10 of her prior matches against Top 10 opponents in straight sets, but took out the World No. 7 in 1 hour and 33 minutes to set up an all-unseeded final with Poland’s Magdalena Frech. The Polish No. 3 previously defeated Zhang Shuai in the other semifinal, 6-2, 6-7(6), 6-3, to reach her third career singles final on the WTA Tour Driven by Mercedes-Benz — and her second at WTA 500 level in Mexico.<\/p>\n Bucsa reached her first tour-level singles final last October in Hong Kong, and hasn’t lost a set so far this week to reach her second. And she stormed out of the gates in each set against Paolini, taking leads of 5-2 in the first and 4-0 in the second, en route to delivering a memorable victory in more ways than one.<\/p>\n “It’s so special because today is my dad’s birthday, so this win is for him,” she said post-match. “I was so focused on playing my game. I tried to be consistent, but later, Jasmine tried to hit harder and she was going for more winners. But I was keeping my mind calm, and I’m very happy for this win.”<\/p>\n Frech also showed mental strength to top Zhang in 2 hours and 35 minutes. The Pole had four match points in the second set — two on return at 5-4 and two more in the tiebreak — only to be pushed level by an inspired performance from Zhang. Though the Chinese veteran almost doubled Frech’s total of winners, Frech’s dogged determination won out in the end. After the pair traded breaks twice to start the decider, she won the last four games.<\/p>\n “It was an incredible match … I don’t even know what to say. Shuai, she’s a great player and a great person, and she played unbelievable especially in the important moments, important points,” Frech said afterwards. “I don’t know how I won this match, actually.<\/p>\n “I tried to stay calm, but it’s never easy when you lose four match points and you have to play another set. I tried to come back to my game, but I had no power, no energy in the last minutes … I’m saving energy for tomorrow’s final!”<\/p>\n Frech, the 2024 Guadalajara champion, takes a 2-1 winning head-to-head against Bucsa into the final — but they have never played at main tour level.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nobody beats Cristina Bucsa 11 times in a row.\u00a0The 28-year-old Spaniard advanced to her first WTA 500 final…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":796398,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4105],"tags":[79,1068,661,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-796397","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-text","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116152676412210900","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796397","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=796397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796397\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/796398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=796397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=796397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=796397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}