The first semifinal this Saturday at the P.Sauvaigo Sports Park in Cagnes-sur-Mer was won in two sets by the Brazilian ranked 115th in the world, B. Haddad Maia against the Montenegrin, ranked 109th in the world, and seeded No. 5, D. Kovinic.
The Brazilian, who is over 1.80m tall, gave her opponent no chance by adopting a very dynamic footwork approach and putting a lot of intensity into all her shots. The strategy of the player and her very close coach was clearly to take the ball early and hit hard. Kovinic tried a bit late in the match, in the 2nd set, to vary the trajectories, but the very tall Haddad Maia managed to continue accelerating balls at shoulder height.
The second semifinal, which pitted K. Zavatska (Ukr), ranked 365th in the world, against J. Teichmann (Sui), ranked 176th in the world, was won by the latter 6/3, 6/2 after a match with much longer rallies than the previous one. The young 19-year-old Swiss, on a steady rise in the world rankings, is having a very serious tournament. Her very complete and consistent game, as well as her very positive and combative attitude, allowed her to win this match again today.
She managed to “tighten” her game at the right moments, immediately after being broken at the beginning of the 2nd set to come back in the score, as well as in the game at 4/2 for her by admirably playing on the variety of trajectories (height, length, width, speed, spin) to win very long rallies.
A promising final tomorrow at 2:30 pm between J. Teichmann (Sui) and B. Haddad Maia (Bra). Knowing that in their last encounter, the Swiss player won 7/5 in the 3rd set.
by Laurence Andreoletti
