{"id":7049,"date":"2023-03-16T23:58:28","date_gmt":"2023-03-16T23:58:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/indian-wells-defending-champions-iga-swiatek-reaches-semi-final\/"},"modified":"2023-03-16T23:58:30","modified_gmt":"2023-03-16T23:58:30","slug":"indian-wells-defending-champions-iga-swiatek-reaches-semi-final","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/indian-wells-defending-champions-iga-swiatek-reaches-semi-final\/","title":{"rendered":"Indian Wells: Defending champions Iga Swiatek reaches semi-final"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Swiatek was beaten in straight sets by Elena Rybakina, who she will face in the Indian Wells semi-final, at the Australian Open in January<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

World number one Iga Swiatek continued her pursuit of back-to-back Indian Wells titles as she cruised past Romania’s Sorana Cirstea in straight sets to reach the semi-finals.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The 21-year-old beat Cirstea, ranked 83 in the world, 6-2 6-3.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The defending champion won eight consecutive games en route to a comprehensive victory in California.<\/span><\/p>\n

Winner of the French and US Opens last year, Swiatek will face Wimbledon champion Elena Rybakina on Friday.<\/span><\/p>\n

Kazakhstan’s Rybakina, who beat the Czech Republic’s Karlina Muchova 7-6 (7-4) 2-6 6-4 in her quarter-final, knocked Swiatek out of the Australian Open in January.<\/span><\/p>\n

Swiatek, who <\/span>beat Briton Emma Raducanu in the fourth round<\/span><\/a>, is looking to become just the second woman, after Martina Navratilova in 1990 and 1991, to win back-to-back titles at this tournament.<\/span><\/p>\n

Cirstea recovered an early break and batted off a break point to level the opening set at 2-2 before Swiatek steamed through the next eight games.<\/span><\/p>\n

Swiatek powered to two breaks of serve early in the second set before Cirstea clawed one back then held for 4-2, but the top seed is yet to lose a set at the tournament and sailed to a comfortable victory in one hour 22 minutes.<\/span><\/p>\n

Earlier on Thursday, Rybakina started slowly against Muchova, failing to convert five break points in the first set but eventually forcing a tie-brea, which she won after the 26-year-old’s double fault.<\/span><\/p>\n

World number 76 Muchova deservedly took the second set before Rybakina produced some powerful serves to secure the victory and progress to her first ever Indian Wells semi-final.<\/span><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Greece’s Maria Sakkari rallied from a set and a break down to beat Petra Kvitova 4-6 7-5 6-1 to secure a second consecutive Indian Wells semi-final spot.<\/span><\/p>\n

Kvitova started well – having secured a dramatic match-point saving win over Jessica Pegula a day earlier – to take the first set and immediately break Sakkari in the second.<\/span><\/p>\n

But Sakkari came from 40-0 down in the final game to force a deciding set, which she won in dominant fashion.<\/span><\/p>\n

The 27-year-old will now face world number two Aryna Sabalenka, who moved into the semi-finals with a 6-4 6-0 victory over American Coco Gauff on Wednesday.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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Swiatek was beaten in straight sets by Elena Rybakina, who she will face in the Indian Wells semi-final, at the Australian Open in January World number one Iga Swiatek continued her pursuit of back-to-back Indian Wells titles as she cruised past Romania’s Sorana Cirstea in straight sets to reach the semi-finals. The 21-year-old beat Cirstea, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7050,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7049"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7049"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7049\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7051,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7049\/revisions\/7051"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7050"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}