No. 4 seed Caroline Garcia of France rallied from a set and a break down and reached her first semifinal of 2019 with a 3-6, 6-3, 6-2 win Thursday over Ukrainian teenager Marta Kostyuk at the Internationaux de Strasbourg in France.
The 2016 Strasbourg champion was pushed to the brink by the 16-year-old Kostyuk, whose aggressive hitting gave her the first set and a 3-2 lead in the second set. Garcia answered with two straight breaks to even the match and two more breaks to open the decider, winning nine straight games in that span.
Garcia will face compatriot Chloe Paquet, a 6-3, 7-6 (1) winner against Daria Gavrilova.
Friday’s other semifinal pits No. 2 seed Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus against No. 6 Dayana Yastremska of Ukraine. Sabalenka blasted nine aces and 30 winners to just 22 unforced errors in a 6-1, 3-6, 6-2 defeat of Puerto Rico’s Monica Puig. Yastremska eliminated France’s Fiona Ferro 6-1, 6-3.
Nurnberger Versicherungs Cup
Top-seeded Yulia Putintseva of Kazakhstan survived the longest match of the 2019 season, outlasting Germany’s Anna-Lena Friedsam 7-5, 6-7 (5), 7-6 (2) in an epic quarterfinal clash in Germany.
Capping a back-and-forth battle that lasted three hours and 21 minutes, the final tiebreak was over relatively quickly as Putintseva built a 4-0 lead and had four match points at 6-2. After clinching it on her first attempt, she dropped her racquet in relief.
The other three quarterfinal winners also were pushed to a third set, including Putintseva’s semifinal opponent, Sorana Cirstea. The Romanian rallied to defeat Serbian Nina Stojanovic 4-6, 6-4, 6-2.
No. 2 seed Katerina Siniakova of the Czech Republic eliminated American Madison Brengle 1-6, 6-4, 6-0, and Slovenia’s Tamara Zidansek defeated Veronika Kudermetova of Russia 6-4, 2-6, 6-3.
–Field Level Media
