SAMANTHA Stosur and Daria Gavrilova are on track to meet in a rare all-Australian WTA final after advancing to the last four of the claycourt event in Strasbourg.
Continuing their promising French Open build-ups, Stosur hammered nine aces en route to a 7-6 (7-5) 6-4 victory over Carla Suarez Navarro before Gavrilova denied fellow Australian Ashleigh Barty 6-4 6-7 (3-7) 7-6 (7-5) in a two-and- three-quarter-hour quarter-final thriller on Thursday.
Samantha Stosur is in the semi-finals of the Strasbourg Open.Source:Getty Images
Champion in 2015, sixth-seeded Stosur will play either China’s Peng Shaui or American Shelby Rogers on Friday for a place in Saturday’s final, while Gavrilova will face Frenchwoman Caroline Garcia or big-serving Czech Kristyna Pliskova.
Along with Barty, Stosur and Gavrilova were the first Australian trio to make the quarter-finals of the same WTA event in 27 years.
Now the pair – separated by just one spot in the rankings – are the first Aussie women to reach the semis of the same event since Jelena Dokic and Jarmila Gajdisova in Kuala Lumpar, in 2011.
Daria Gavrilova has also won through to the semi-finals of the Strasbourg Open.Source:Getty Images
But while Stosur preserved her record of not dropping a set all week, Barty pushed Gavrilova all the way in a rollercoaster encounter featuring a dozen service breaks.
Backing up her impressive run to the quarters last week in Rome, Gavrilova led 4-2 in the third set only for Barty – the resurgent former Wimbledon junior champion – to roar back to take the match to a deciding tiebreaker.
Barty once again rallied from a mini-break down at 2-5 before Gavrilova finally clinched victory with an unreturnable serve to secure her sixth win from her past seven matches on the red dirt.
Originally published as Stosur, Gavrilova into Strasbourg semis
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