By Michael Church
MELBOURNE, Jan 28 (Reuters) – Fifth seed Elena Rybakina booked her place in the Australian Open semi-finals on Wednesday with a dominant second set display to hand six-time Grand Slam champion Iga Swiatek a 7-5 6-1 defeat at Melbourne Park.
Looking to lift the trophy for the first time, the 28-year-old will take on American Jessica Pegula for a place in Saturday’s final.
Rybakina fired 11 aces and 26 winners as she ended Swiatek’s career Grand Slam bid on Rod Laver Arena, winning eight of the last nine games to underline her authority.
“Really pleased with the win,” said Rybakina. “We know each other pretty well and I was just trying to stay aggressive.
“I feel like in the first set for both of us the first serve wasn’t working so we were trying to step in on the second serve to put pressure on each other.
“I think in the second I just started to play more free, serve better and I’m really happy with the win.”
Swiatek had made a quick start, breaking Rybakina in the opening game as she punished the Kazakh’s second serve but the number two seed failed to consolidate, immediately surrendering her advantage.
Both players held serve until the final game, when Swiatek fired into the net to give Rybakina the opening set after almost an hour’s play.
Rybakina then made the most of Swiatek’s frustrations with her service, taking the second game of the second set by crashing a forehand into the corner with the Pole rooted to the spot.
Swiatek was left questioning a marginal line call as Rybakina broke her serve again late in the set before comfortably holding to advance.
Swiatek struggled with her serve throughout the contest and the world number two said that was something she needed to improve on in the coming months.
“I didn’t serve as well as in Cincinnati, for example, against Elena. My serve was kind of normal and sometimes it could have given me a bit more,” Swiatek told reporters.
“There’s some stuff on the serve that I want to change and I already changed that in the pre-season. But then matches come and you don’t have that much time to think about this.
“You don’t want to think about these details when you play. So then it comes back to the old patterns… There’s some stuff that I can change to play better and I’ll try to do that.”
(Reporting by Michael Church, Additional reporting by Rohith Nair in Bengaluru; Editing by Edwina Gibbs, Christopher Cushing and Shri Navaratnam)
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