Anhelina Kalinina and Elena Rybakina will play for the title at the WTA 1000 Rome Open. Both tennis players won their semi-finals clashes and will compete to win the prestigious title.
Ukrainian tennis player Anhelina Kalinina qualified for the final of a WTA 1000 Rome Open for the first time in her career. The 30th-seeded Anhelina Kalinina defeated 11th-seeded Veronika Kudermetova (Russia) by 2-1 (7:5, 5:7, 6:2) after almost three hours of play and will play for the clay competition trophy in the Italian capital.
With the success, the 26-year-old Ukrainian guaranteed herself a rise of 22 places in the world rankings to a career-high 25th WTA position. Anhelina Kalinina took the first set with a key break in the 11th game and led 5:3 in the second, but a run of 16 points followed for Veronika Kudermetova, who took four straight games to equalize the score.
The failure did not break the Ukrainian tennis player, who started the decisive third set strongly and led 4:0. This proved to be enough for her to win the set and close the match.
In the final, she will face Elena Rybakina (Kazakhstan), who defeated the 2017 Roland Garros winner Jelena Ostapenko (Latvia) by 2-0 (6:2, 6:4).
The match was stopped in the second set with a score of 4:2 for Jelena Ostapenko due to the bad weather conditions i and the rain that poured over the open court. However, the two tennis players finished the match and after play resumed, the Latvian player suffered a collapse in which she lost four straight sets and eventually conceded the match.
This will be the fourth final for Elena Rybakina since the beginning of the season. Earlier this year she won the title in WTA 1000 Indian Wells Open, played in the final of the Australian Open and WTA 1000 Miami Open, where lost to Aryna Sabalenka (Belarus) and Petra Kvitova (Czech Republic), respectively.
Elena Rybakina is the third tennis player to play in the finals of the Australian Open, Indian Wells and the tournaments in Miami and Rome in one season. Before her, this was done by the American Monica Seles in 1991 and the Russian Maria Sharapova in 2012.
