Cincinnati (USA) on August 21 : Petra Kvitova reached the Western & Southern Open final after beating the 2019 champion Madison Keys 6-7(6), 6-1 7-6, 3-1 in their semifinal match on the same day on Saturday.The victory also marks the 40th WTA Tour singles final of Kvitova’s career.
Kvitova is currently 29-10 in finals, will try at her 30th singles title in her career on Sunday.
The world’s No.28 player from the Czech Republic took 2 hours and 18 minutes to beat American Keys, ranked 24th, in a battle between former Top 10 players and power players.
Kvitova and Keys were in their most recent match with a deadlocked 4-4 in their head-to-head.
Their last meeting was played in the opening round of this tournament a year ago, and Kvitova was victorious in straight sets.
After dropping the first set tiebreak, Kvitova rebounded to take another Cincinnati victory over Keys and move ahead in their rematch.
This is the Czech’s first victory in the Cincinnati semifinal after losing in the same round in 2012 and in 2018.
With the victory The the former World No 2 Kvitova is expected to climb back into the Top 20 in Monday’s singles rankings.The two-time Wimbledon champion Kvitova was down to No.34 earlier in the year her lowest ranking since 2010.
Despite losing on the day, Keys posted another stellar performance in Cincinnati this week with a round-of-16 win against the world’s top seed Iga Swiatek, her first win against an active World No.1 player.Keys also defeated the reigning Wimbledon champion Elena Rybakina in the quarterfinals.
After losing in the opening two sets Kvitova hit a huge forehand to break Keys in the first game of the decisive.
Keys almost pulled herself back with an advantage of 0-40 on Kvitova’s serve, which was 4-3 however, the Czech was able to get out of danger to hold to 5-3 and keep her lead in break.
In the next match, Keys used a forehand winner and a spectacular serve to erase the initial two match points she had to face and a stunning Kvitova backhand return handed Kvitova the Czech the third match point.
It was the icing on the cake after Keys hit a forehand wide to put an end to the big-hitting match.
Keys was a winner more often and four less unforced mistakes over Kvitova during the tournament.
However, Kvitova proved more effective with break points, winning five of 12 break points, whereas Keys only went 2-for-8.
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