Elena Rybakina and Simona Halep set up the second semi-final of the 2022 Wimbledon on Wednesday. The Kazakh, seeded 17th, and the Romanian, seeded 16th, made their way into the second-last round of the Championships in different manners, in matches that were almost concurrent.
Playing slightly ahead of Halep and yet whose match finished minutes after the former world no. 1’s, Rybakina stopped Ajla Tomljanovic on her tracks. Rybakina needed an hour and 51 minutes to come from a set down against the Australian and take the win, 4-6, 6-2, 6-3.
At the start of the match, it was Tomljanovic who perplexed Rybakina. While both players traded hefty blows from the back of the court, Tomljanovic’s shots made the bigger impact as she seized an early break and held it long enough to serve out the set.
Rybakina, however, got back into the match from the second set onwards bolstered not only by her shot-making that’d settled but also helped by the breaking down of Tomljanovic’s game, on the other side of the net.
Tomljanovic was able to recover a break back in the fourth game but lost her serve in succession in the sixth and eighth games that allowing Rybakina to level the match. The deciding set was an extension of the second set and went quickly away from Tomljanovic right up to the seventh game when down 1-5 with Rybakina serving for the match, she broke back to slightly narrow the gap between her opponent and her.
On her serve in the following game, Tomljanovic faced a match point but did well to erase it. But she wasn’t able to do much beyond that point as Rybakina, serving for the match for the second time, didn’t blink and served it out to love.
Tomljanovic’s first serve let her down in the match as she won only 57% of her first-serve points to Rybakina’s 76%. In terms of winners and unforced errors, the latter outhit Tomljanovic – with 34 winners and 28 unforced errors to the Australian’s 14 winners and 21 unforced errors.
Wimbledon: Another day, Simona Halep’s dispatching of another rival
Meanwhile, in the other semi-final, Halep ran the 20th-seeded Amanda Anisimova ragged throughout the course of their 63-minute encounter to claim the win, 6-2, 6-4.
Anisimova wasn’t able to match Halep’s intensity and as she missed more, her frustrations grew. A brief letting up came Anisimova’s way deep in the second set when Halep served for the match at 5-2. The Romanian went down 15-40 on the back of a couple of erroneous shots before Anisimova broke the 30-year-old with a winner.
Anisimova consolidated the break in the next game and then promptly put pressure on Halep who’d a second chance to serve out the match at 5-4, going up three break points. However, Halep saved the lot with one last showing of gutsy play before winning the match on her first match point.
Anisimova hit two more winners than Halep, 13 to the latter’s 11 but where the higher-ranked player had just six unforced errors, Anisimova had almost five times that number – 28. This is Simona Halep’s first Wimbledon semi-final since she’d a title run in 2019.
Meanwhile, for her next opponent, Elena Rybakina, this is her first visit to the semi-finals of both, Wimbledon and a Slam. Photo Credit: AELTC/Eddie Keogh
