(Reuters) – Seventh seed Daria Kasatkina shook off a mid-match blip to move into her second final of the season with a 6-3 4-6 7-6(2) win over Beatriz Haddad Maia in an absorbing contest at the Abu Dhabi Open on Saturday.
Kasatkina, who is seeking her first title of the year, next faces Kazakh top seed Elena Rybakina or Russian eighth seed Liudmila Samsonova, who meet in the other semi-final later on Stadium Court.
“Beatriz is a huge fighter, one of the biggest on tour. Her level of giving everything on court is just incredible. She was not giving me anything for free. I had to earn this by myself,” Kasatkina said after an 83-minute final set.
“Really happy and a bit exhausted, but it was a great match and I hope everyone enjoyed it.”
The Russian dropped serve twice in the opening set but took full advantage of her sixth-seeded opponent’s struggles to break four times and wrest the early advantage in the match.
But Haddad Maia rediscovered her rhythm and went up 4-2 in the next set before Adelaide runner-up Kasatkina squandered the opportunity to draw level and allowed the 27-year-old to take the contest into a decider.
The breaks continued to flow in the final set, where the rallies seemed never-ending, but Kasatkina raised her game in the tiebreak to seal her first victory over Haddad Maia in their third meeting.
(Reporting by Shrivathsa Sridhar in Bengaluru; Editing by Toby Davis)
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