FORTH WORTH (US), Nov 6: Caroline Garcia spiked a banana on her bench while a first-set lead was slipping away, and Daria Kasatkina later whacked a couple of balls hard into the court with her racket after losing on serve.
All that was before a tense third set filled with brilliant shot-making and all the accompanying shouts and fist pumps – with the fourth semifinal spot in the WTA Finals on the line.
Garcia claimed that last opening in the season-ending event with a thrilling 4-6 6-1 7-6(5) round-robin victory on Saturday.
The sixth-ranked Frenchwoman became the first in 30 matches this season to beat Kasatkina after losing the first set to the No. 8 player.
A third set that included a nine-deuce game with Kasatkina finally holding serve for a 5-4 lead ended in the tiebreaker when a scrambling Kasatkina put a volley into the net on Garcia’s second match point. “It was a crazy match,” Garcia said after 2 hours, 27 minutes of mostly battling from the baseline.
Garcia and Kasatkina played the winner-take-all match after both lost to top-ranked Iga Swiatek and beat 18-year-old American Coco Gauff in group play.
Swiatek, the US Open and French Open winner this year, had already clinched the top spot in the group before beating Gauff 6-3 6-0 on Saturday. The 21-year-old from Poland dropped just 13 games in three straight-sets victories.
Fifth-ranked Maria Sakkari and No 7 Aryna Sabalenka are the other singles qualifiers from the eight-player field on the indoor hard court at Dickies Arena.
Gauff and doubles partner Jessica Pegula each went 0-6 in singles and doubles. They were the first Americans to make the WTA Finals debut in singles and doubles since Lindsay Davenport in 1994.
Swiatek will face Sabalenka and Sakkari will meet Garcia in the semi-finals on Sunday. Garcia has reached the semi-finals in both WTA Finals appearances. The first was in 2017.
The final Monday in an event that was moved to Texas from China over concerns about the safety of Peng Shuai, a Grand Slam doubles champion who accused a former government official there of sexual assault.
Garcia tossed one of her bananas in disgust while losing 15 of the last 17 points in the first set as a 4-2 lead evaporated. The 29-year-old responded early in the second, winning seven consecutive games to take a 1-0 lead in the third set.
One of those victories was a break for a 3-1 lead in the second, with Kasatkina slamming the ball that had been in play into the court, then grabbing the one she didn’t use for the serve and doing the same.
Anger turned to celebration in the third with the shots being pulled off by both players.
Kasatkina broke for 3-3 by running down a drop shot and flicking a crosscourt forehand winner, then hitting a running backhand winner past Garcia in one of the few times either came to the net.
Garcia ran down a drop shot for a tight-angled forehand crosscourt winner.
“The third set was, I cannot see there was a big difference between us,” said Kasatkina.
“We were just, you know, going shoulder by shoulder, and then just one or two points decided everything.” (AP)
