Sara Errani and Jasmine Paolini fly to the finals in Beijing
WTA 1000 Beijing: Sara Errani and Jasmine Paolini are in the finals
Sara Errani and Jasmine Paolini give themselves another final in this wonderful season and center access to the WTA Finals in Riyadh. The Olympic champions, in fact, beat the Americans Sofia Kenin and Bethanie Mattek-Sands in three sets with the final score of 6-3 1-6 10-4 after one hour and twenty minutes of play in the semifinals of the WTA 1000 in Beijing.
In the first set, after an exchange of breaks between the third and fourth games, Errani and Paolini put the arrow, stringing three consecutive games (5-2). Here Kenin and Mattek-Sands tried to get back into the partial, recovering a break disadvantage (5-3) but gave up the serve again in the ninth game, handing the set to the Azzurri (6-3).
The second partial è one-sided: the U.S. goes up in an instant 3-0, Sara and Jas try to react by taking away the service to the Americans (1-3), who però string three more consecutive games (6-1), taking the challenge to the third and decisive set.
In the tie-break to start better are Errani and Paolini, who win four of the first five points (4-1). Kenin and Mattek-Sands tried to stay in the match until 5-4, but here a new stretch by the Italian women finally closed the score on 10-4.
Errani and Paolini thus hit their fifth final this season at the China Open. On the other side of the net they will find the winning pair of the challenge between Taiwanese Hao-Ching Chan and Russian Veronika Kudermetova opposed to Italian Elisabetta Cocciaretto and Russian Liudmila Samsonova.