Montreal (AFP) – Danish 16th seed Clara Tauson stunned reigning Australian Open champion Madison Keys 6-1, 6-4 on Tuesday and advanced to the semi-finals of the WTA Canadian Open. Tauson dominated the opening set and took full advantage of Keys giving up a break on a double fault to open the second. The Dane won 12 of 19 points on her second serves and kept Keys at bay most of the night.
Tauson will play Wednesday for a berth in the final against the winner of a later match between four-time Grand Slam champion Naomi Osaka of Japan and Ukraine’s 10th-seeded Elina Svitolina. Keys joined a scrap heap of Montreal seeds, with the top five seeds and seven of the top 10 seeds ousted before the quarter-finals.
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Tauson, 22, seeks her fourth career WTA title after the 2021 Lyon and Luxenbourg Opens and this year’s Auckland Open, where Osaka retired after winning the first set of the final. That was Tauson’s only meeting with Osaka while the Dane is 2-0 against Svitolina, winning in three sets on clay in Portugal in 2023 and in a third-set tiebreaker at Dubai six months ago.
Tauson, who also eliminated Polish second seed Iga Swiatek in the fourth round, is one win from her second WTA 1000 final, having lost the first in February at Dubai to Mirra Andreeva. The Dane dominated Keys in the first set, breaking in the fourth and sixth games, and Keys double faulted away another break to begin the second set. Tauson held from there to win, never facing a break point in the second set before holding at love in the last game to end matters after 70 minutes.
Elena Rybakina, the 2022 Wimbledon champion, and 18-year-old Canadian sensation Victoria Mboko will meet in Wednesday’s other semi-final on the Montreal hardcourts in the US Open tuneup. Rybakina won their only prior meeting 6-3, 7-5 last month in the second round at Washington.
© 2024 AFP
