The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Sabalenka secures seedless final in Conn. Open
NEW HAVEN — The Connecticut Open singles final is officially seedless.
Aryna Sabalenka watched Julia Goerges double-fault on a point that could have forced a third set, then came back to win the tiebreak, beating Goerges 6-4, 7-6 (3) Friday on Stadium Court at the Connecticut Tennis Center to reach her third final of the WTA season.
Sabalenka is seeking her first tournament win above the 125k level, where she won in Mumbai, India, last year. She lost in Eastbourne, England, earlier this year after beating Goerges in three sets along the way. She also made a final at an International-level tournament, a cut down from Eastbourne and New Haven, in Lugano, Switzerland.
She said she feels fresher this time, playing three two-set matches out of her four this week.
“Well, I will tell myself like, ‘OK, this is the next one, the second one. Try to enjoy it,’ ” Sabalenka said. “Just enjoy. Don’t (put) too much pressure on yourself, just enjoying. It’s enough.”
Ranked 25th, she will meet either 30th-ranked Carla Suarez Navarro or qualifier Monica Puig, ranked 72nd, in Saturday’s final at 3 p.m. (ESPN2).
Goerges, the fifth seed and ranked ninth in the WTA, was the last of the eight seeded players left in the draw. In 21 years since this tournament moved to New Haven, there had never been a final that did not include at least one seeded player until Goerges was eliminated.
In all but seven of the first 20 years, both finalists were seeded (though 2016 included Elina Svitolina, who got the 10th seed after several of the eight original seeds withdrew).
After Thursday’s quarterfinal win over Belinda Bencic, Sabalenka said she wanted to keep herself calm after an emotional win over defending champion Daria Gavrilova on Wednesday.
It was important for her Friday, too, she said.
“If you (don’t) count the match with Gavrilova, I was pretty calm on the court,” this week, Sabalenka said. “I know what happened there. On the other matches, I was really calm. This has been the key for all matches.”
She held serve easily throughout the first set, but failed to put away seven break points. She did get the eighth in a rough game for Goerges to take the first set.
They broke back and forth late in the second set, with Sabalenka converting her last break point of four in the last game to force the tiebreak.
“She’s a great player. It’s really tough to play against her because she’s a big server,” Sabalenka said. “Sometimes it’s impossible to take her serve, I mean no chance.
“This is just about mentality game. You have to be focused like 100 percent on every point and sometimes try to find the chance on her serve.”
Two qualifiers have reached finals here, with Puig trying to become a third Friday night. Of the
five other unseeded players to reach the finals, three won, including Gavrilova last year. The other two, Caroline Wozniacki in 2008 and Simona Halep in 2013, later returned to New Haven as top seeds.
On the other hand, Goerges’ loss keeps an odd streak alive: No fifth seed has ever reached the final here.
No sixth seed has made a final here, either. No wonder sixth seed Ashleigh Barty withdrew last week with a viral illness, the first of three seeds to pull out before playing a match, along with topseeded Halep and seventh-seeded Kiki Bertens. Third-seeded Petra Kvitova retired after one quarterfinal set against Suarez Navarro.
Doubles didn’t suffer the same unseeded-final fate as singles. Top seeded Andrea Sestini Hlavackova and Barbora Strycova came back to beat Alicja Rosolska and Abigail Spears 3-6, 6-3, 12-10 in the semis Friday.
They’ll meet Hsieh Su-Wei and Laura Siegemund in Saturday’s final. Hsieh and Strycova won a doubles tournament this year at Indian Wells, Calif.