LONDON – Italian qualifier Camila Giorgi continued her impressive form at the Eastbourne championships by removing top seed Aryna Sabalenka in the quarter-finals.
Giorgi, a quarter-finalist at Wimbledon in 2018, used her aggressive game to claim a 7-6(5) 0-6 6-4 victory and set up a semi-final against Estonian Anett Kontaveit.
Former French Open champion Jelena Ostapenko is also showing impressive form ahead of Wimbledon, reaching the semi-finals with a 1-6 7-5 6-2 victory over Russia’s Daria Kasatkina.
“I get very excited, but when it starts I get very sad because it’s very short, the grass season,” former junior Wimbledon champion Ostapenko said according to Reuters.
“I wish it could be longer, I love to play on grass.”
Sabalenka had won her only previous meeting with Giorgi and looked on course for a comeback victory when she reeled off the second set with a flurry of winners to level the match.
The Belarusian then earned the first break of serve in the deciding set but Giorgi’s game re-ignited to claim victory.
“It was a great match and very good level,” she said. “At the end I think it was more mental than physical.”
Giorgi knocked out fifth seed Karolina Pliskova in the opening round, also in three sets, meaning it is the first time in her career that she has had two wins over top-10 players at the same tournament.
Kontaveit battled back to beat qualifier Viktorija Golubic 2-6 7-6(2) 7-5.
“The main thing, probably I was playing more aggressive today and tried to put as much pressure as possible on her,” Ostapenko said in her post-match press conference.
“In the second set I was fighting very hard to win it. I think in the third set I already found my game and played much better.”
With her one-hour and 46-minute victory, 2017 Roland Garros champion Ostapenko finds herself into her first tour-level semifinal since her title-winning run in Luxembourg at the very tail end of 2019.
Ostapenko thus improved to 3-2 against 34th-ranked Kasatkina, ending a two-match losing streak against the Russian. Two of Ostapenko’s victories over Kasatkina have come on the grass of Eastbourne, with another one occurring in the 2016 opening round.
World No.43 Ostapenko has now bested her previous best Eastbourne result, which was a quarterfinal showing in 2018.
“I get very excited, but when it starts I get very sad because it’s very short, the grass season,” said Ostapenko, who also won the junior Wimbledon singles title in 2014. “I wish it could be longer, because I love to play on grass.”
Djokovic forced out of Mallorca final
Novak Djokovic’s hopes of a rare doubles title on the eve of Wimbledon were shattered Thursday when he was forced to withdraw from the Mallorca final after his Spanish partner Carlos Gomez-Herrera suffered a foot injury.
World number one Djokovic and longtime friend Gomez-Herrera had defeated third seeds Oliver Marach and Aisam-ul-Haq Qureshi 6-3, 7-6 (7/4) to reach the final in their first tournament playing together.
However, later in the day the pair withdrew.
“Novak Djokovic and Carlos Gomez-Herrera have withdrawn from the Mallorca doubles final (foot injury, Gomez-Herrera),” said an ATP statement according to AFP.
Earlier Djokovic had been overjoyed to reach the final on the grass courts of Mallorca where he was building up to the defence of his Wimbledon title next week.
“I don’t think we expected to reach the finals,” Djokovic said in an on-court interview afterwards.
“But if we play well, we can return very well, we serve very well and I think we have a quite solid net game.”
In the singles event, top seed Daniil Medvedev came through a tight opening set to beat Norway’s Casper Ruud 7-5, 6-1 and book his place in the semi-final.
