Australian Open 2022: After trailing a set and a break down, Iga Swiatek turned the match around. She was able to beat Kaia Kanepi in the second-longest women’s singles match of the fortnight, 4-6, 7-6(2), 6-3.
It took 3 hours and 1-minute for Swiatek to conquer Kanepi and book her first Australian Open semifinals spot. Swiatek is now 5-0 in three-set matches at Grand Slams in which she lost the first set.
Kaia Kanepi is now 0-7 in the major quarterfinals fixtures. but, having beat Angelique Kerber and Aryna Sabalenka to reach here will surely benefit her morale and also her rankings.
Saving eight set points before losing the first set, Swiatek quickly found herself down 6-4, 1-0 as she struggled to match Kanepi’s first-strike, power tennis—four winners earned the Estonian a break to begin the second, with a final crunching backhand literally bringing Swiatek to her knees.
Iga Swiatek found the sixth breakpoint to be her turnaround. The Estonian had four-game points to extend the second set lead to 2-0, but it was exactly that moment Iga Swiatek broke free and ran off with winning four games in a row.
Kanepi would however bounce back with three consecutive games in a row. Neither player was again challenged on serve until the tiebreak, where Swiatek raced out to an early lead and never looked back.
It was already a tiring match when they entered the decider with more than two hours on the clock. Kanepi was feeling the tiredness as her unforced error grew.
Swiatek broke four times in the decider, opening up leads of 2-0 and 5-2 after Kanepi surged briefly for 2-2, but needed two games to win the match. Swiatek offered up two double faults and two unforced errors when serving for the match in the seventh game, but refused to be denied in the next game—in more ways than one—on her first match point.
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