The fight for the prestigious Dubai title and $442,198 in prize money will feature fifth seed Sara Errani and sixth seed Petra Kvitova.
Errani got past her good friend and doubles partner Roberta Vinci, who reached the semifinals with wins over two-time Grand Slam champion Svetlana Kuznetsova and two current Top 10 players, Angelique Kerber and Sam Stosur, one of whom is also a Grand Slam champion. Errani beat her fellow Italian 6-3 6-3 in a match that featured 11 breaks of serve in those 18 games. Vinci has now lost the last five singles meetings against her doubles partner.
In the other Friday’s semifinal, Petra Kvitova was better than former world No.1 Caroline Wozniacki, 6-3 6-4. This is a big success for the 2011 Wimbledon champion Kvitova, who had failed to win more than two matches at any tournament this year. After comfortably taking the first set, Kvitova gave away her serve in the fifth game of the second set to trail 2-3, but broke back immediately and then again to move into the final of the mini major, as she called the Dubai Duty Free Championships.
Kvitova has won all three of her matches against Errani so far, in straight sets, and is the favorite for the title at the $2,000,000 event. (photos: © Neal Trousdale)
Well I’m kinda sad Caroline won’t play in the final, I wanted to see how would she do. On the other hand, I’m happy an Italian player plays in the final 😉 Go Sara !!
I think Petra needs this title more than Sara 🙂
Best of luck for both of them 😉 🙂
Petra won, Congratulations ! well done 🙂 😉 <3