Victoria Azarenka continued her bid for a fourth Miami Open title with victory over Yulia Putintseva to arrange a semi-final encounter with Elena Rybakina.
The Belarusian twenty seventh seed, who gained her final title at Miami Gardens in 2016, wanted nearly three hours to assert a 7-6 (7-4) 1-6 6-3 win towards Putintseva.
There was a 45-minute stoppage within the opening set as a consequence of an influence outage.
In the meantime, world quantity 4 Rybakina beat Greek eighth seed Maria Sakkari 7-5 6-7 (4-7) 6-4.
Rybakina, who’s the very best ranked girls’s participant remaining within the match, misplaced in final 12 months’s closing to the Czech Republic’s Petra Kvitova.
The Kazakh had two match factors within the second set on Tuesday however Sakkari fought again and gained the tiebreaker to power a decider.
A single break of serve within the third set was sufficient for Rybakina to wrap up the victory after a gruelling two hours and 48 minutes.
“I’ve no phrases as a result of I am so drained however I am actually proud of the win,” Rybakina, 24, mentioned.
After the ability outage to digital line-calling system brought about the delay in Azarenka’s match, the , 34-year-old saved three set factors earlier than clinching the first-set tiebreak towards Putintseva.
The unseeded Kazakh dominated the second set, however dropped serve twice within the third to permit Azarenka, who defeated Britain’s Katie Boulter within the fourth spherical, to achieve a primary semi-final in Miami since 2018.
On the opposite facet of the draw, American fifth seed Jessica Pegula will face Russia’s Ekaterina Alexandrova for a spot within the final 4, whereas Caroline Garcia of France takes on American Danielle Collins.