A pair of unseeded players, Indonesia’s Janice Tjen and France’s Tiantsoa Rakotomanga Rajaonah, pulled off semifinal upsets at the SP Open Saturday in Sao Paolo and will meet in Sunday’s final.
Tjen took down No. 6 seed Francesca Jones of Great Britain 7-6 (0), 6-3, and Rakotomanga Rajaonah upended No. 5 seed Renata Zarazua of Mexico 6-3, 6-2 as both reached a WTA tour final for the first time.
Tjen, 23, trailed early in the first set, then broke Jones’ serve to take a 3-2 lead before Jones rallied to pull even at 5-5 before taking a 6-5 lead. However, Tjen bounced back to go ahead 7-6 and cruised 7-0 in the tiebreaker. In the second set, Tjen broke Jones in the eighth game for a 5-3 lead before securing the win on her next serve.
In the 1-hour, 32-minute match, Tjen – who served up eight aces — won roughly 90 percent of points on her first serve along with 58 percent on second-serve points.
Rakotomanga Rajaonah broke Zarazua’s serve three times in the first set, with the third break coming after Zarazua broke back to close within 5-3. The 19-year-old Frenchwoman cruised in the second set, sealing the win with her second break of the set in the 1-hour, 22-minute match. She saved five of six break points, preventing Zarazua from staging a comeback.
Guadalajara Open Akron
Unseeded players Emiliana Arango of Colombia and Iva Jovic of the United States will compete for their first WTA title on Sunday in Guadalajara, Mexico, after winning their semifinal matches.
Arango posted a 6-4, 7-5 victory over fellow unseeded player Elsa Jacquemot of France to reach her second WTA final. Jovic defeated fellow unseeded teenager Nikola Bartunkova of the Czech Republic 6-3, 6-7 (5), 6-3, to advance to her first WTA final.
The 24-year-old Arango trailed 4-2 in the first set and saved two break points that would’ve given Jacquemot a 5-3 advantage. Arango broke Jacquemot’s serve to go up 5-4 before closing out the set. In the second set, Arango held on in the 10th game before denying Jacquemot a point to make it 6-5 en route to the victory in the nearly two-hour match.
For Jovic, 17, it took almost three hours to put away Bartunkova, who rallied to win the second set and force a decisive third set. Jovic led the second-set tiebreaker 4-0 and 5-4, but her opponent stormed back to stay alive.
In the final set, Bartunkova left the court for a medical timeout, but came back to save two match points before Jovic’s second ace of the match helped her finally close out the match.
–Field Level Media
