In Friday’s semifinals, Giorgi faced the top seed and world No.18 Qiang Wang. This match would see a ton of service breaks, with each set consisting of five or more. They would split the first two sets by identical scores of 6-4. In the third, the 27-year-old from China served for the match at 5-4, and would hold a match point, but Giorgi would save it and break for 5-5. Camila’s firepower allows her to dictate play more often than not, and she’s continually lifted her game at the right moments this week.
Giorgi would then garner a match point of her own on Wang’s serve at 6-5, but also failed to convert. In the deciding tiebreak, Qiang gained the early mini-break on the first point with a backhand winner down the line. But Camila would punish an extremely soft second serve and get the breaker right back on serve. Wang then took advantage of a Giorgi forehand clipping the net, giving her extra time to rip a forehand and regain the mini-break. They switched sides with Wang leading 4-2.
A few Giorgi errors gave Wang three more match points 6-3, with two of them on Qiang’s serve. But Wang’s forehand misfired on both of the match points on her serve, and then Giorgi would put away a backhand volley to level things at 6-6. Camila would again strike some deep and powerful groundies when she needed them, granting herself a match point at 7-6 on Wang’s serve. And Wang would sail a backhand beyond the baseline, sending the 27-year-old Italian into tomorrow’s final in dramatic fashion.
Camila Giorgi gets the hard fought win after an epic tiebreak!
Defeating Wang to seal a place in the @NYJTL final 4-6, 6-4, 7-6(6)! pic.twitter.com/li0NtxMkyy
— wta (@WTA) August 23, 2019
It’s the second final in four weeks for Giorgi, who was stunned in the Washington final by a first-time WTA champion, Jessica Pegula. Camila saw her ranking fall outside the top 50 last month when her Wimbledon quarterfinalist points from 2018 dropped off her 52-week tally, but she’ll return to the top 50 with today’s win. In her career, Giorgi is 2-5 in WTA tournament finals, with her most recent title coming last October at the Linz Open.
On Saturday in the first Bronx Open singles final, she’ll face another 27-year-old in Magda Linette of Poland. This is only Linette’s second WTA-level final in her career, with the last coming four years ago in Tokyo. She lost in that final to Yanina Wickmayer, so a win today would give Magda her first career singles title. Linette had to qualify to get into this draw, meaning this will be her seventh match in nine days. On Friday, she ousted Katerina Siniakova in straight sets, a day after surviving a third set tiebreak of her own in the quarterfinals against Karolina Muchova.
As much tennis as Linette has played in the Bronx, she may be the fresher of the two finalists. Giorgi’s semifinal was played later in the day on Friday, and lasted nearly three hours. In their only previous meeting, Giorgi prevailed in three sets, on a hard court in Linette’s home country four years ago.
The first Bronx Open doubles champions were crowned on Friday, with Darija Jurak and Maria Jose Martinez Sanchez defeating Margarita Gasparyan and Monica Niculescu in a deciding 10-point tiebreak 10-7. This is the first title for this team, which was formed just a few weeks ago in Canada.
