Polish
seventh seed Iga Swiatek won a hard-fought match in her quarterfinal match
against Estonia’s Kaia Kanepi to reach the Australian Open semifinal on Wednesday. It took
three hours and one minute for Swiatek to beat Kanepi 4-6, 7-6(2), 6-3. It
was the second-longest women’s singles match of the fortnight so far.

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After
winning her first Grand Slam title at the 2020 French Open without the loss of
a set, Swiatek, 20, has rallied from a set down in each of her last two matches
to reach the semifinal at Melbourne Park. She will face world No.27 seed Danielle
Collins, a winner in straight sets against France’s Alizé Cornet, in the semifinal.

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Swiatek
saved eight set points before losing the first set. She then 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.

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After
Kanepi had four-game points to extend her lead to 2-0, Swiatek finally
broke—aided by two unforced errors by the Estonian—and ran off four games in a
row. While Kanepi hit back to win three straight, neither woman was again
challenged on serve until the tiebreak, where Swiatek raced out to an early
lead and never looked back.

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With
more than 2 hours played through the first two sets, Kanepi’s unforced error
count swelled in the decider. 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.