Google News Bett1 Open: Petra Kvitova, Donna Vekic to herald 6th career meeting in Berlin finale!
by ABBEY JOHNSON
Friday saw both the quarter-finals and semi-finals being played at the Bett1 Open after rain washed out Thursday’s scheduled play. As a result, the players had to pull double duty to potentially try and reach Sunday’s final.
In the end, the singles final in the German WTA 500 event was set between Petra Kvitova and Donna Vekic. In the quarter-final, Kvitova, the seventh seed, got through third seed Caroline Garcia. The Czech left-hander needed an hour and 54 minutes to complete a 6-4, 7-6(3) win over the French player.
The first set was the only set when the players dropped their serve. There was a brief exchange of breaks in the set before Kvitova secured a second break to go up in the match. She didn’t face any break point in the second set but was also unable to convert any of the seven break points that came her way on Garcia’s serve.
Vekic, in her last-eight match, posted a 6-2, 7-6(0) win over Elina Avanesyan in 93 minutes.
Bett1 Open: Petra Kvitova, Donna Vekic outlast their rivals
The other two quarter-finalists who entered the semi-finals were Ekaterina Alexandrova and sixth seed Maria Sakkari.
Alexandrova was, in fact, the first to reach the penultimate round in the event after her quarter-final opponent, Veronika Kudermetova pulled out of the tournament before their match with an injured left hip. The sixth-seeded Sakkari defeated Marketa Vondrousova 7-6(7), 6-1 in an hour and 27 minutes.
In the semi-final, Vekic upset Sakkari 6-4, 7-6(8) in two hours and 16 minutes. Both players faced 11 break points each but Vekic saved eight of these to the Greek’s seven. In the second set, Sakkari did her best to push the set into the third set as she saved a trio of match points but on the fourth match point, she was unable to thwart Vekic’s win any longer.
Meanwhile, in her semi-final against Alexandrova, Petra Kvitova clinched a 6-3, 6-4 win after 79 minutes of play. The Bett1 Open final’s the second Kvitova’s reached in 2023 and the 42nd final of her career. On the other side of the net, Alexandrova’s defeat marked an end to her streak of consecutive wins on grass this year that had begun at the Libema Open last week. Photo Credit: WTA Twitter