Fourth-seeded Anna Bondar of Hungary punched her ticket to the final of the MSC Hamburg Ladies Open in Germany on Saturday after outlasting Armenia’s Elina Avanesyan in a marathon match that lasted three hours and 29 minutes. Bondar won the grueling contest 7-6 (3), 4-6, 7-6 (2).
It marks the second straight year Bondar has reached the Hamburg final. She will now face fifth-seeded Tamara Korpatsch, who represents the host country Germany. Korpatsch advanced to the final after Egypt’s Mayar Sherif was forced to retire in the second set due to an injury.
The match against Avanesyan was anything but easy for Bondar. She found herself trailing 5-3 in the opening set before mounting a comeback, ultimately claiming the tiebreaker by winning its final four points. In the deciding third set, Bondar fell behind 2-0 after dropping her serve, but again showed her resilience — winning the first five points of the final tiebreaker to seal the victory.
Korpatsch, meanwhile, had a dominant start in her semifinal, cruising through the first set 6-1 and going up 2-0 in the second before Sherif was unable to continue. Sherif had been riding high after claiming her first tournament title in four years at the Iasi Open in Romania.
At the Prague Open, Austrian player Lilli Tagger pulled off a notable upset, defeating second-seeded Barbora Krejcikova of the Czech Republic 6-7 (5), 6-3, 7-6 (4) to advance to the final. In the other semifinal, eighth-seeded Daria Snigur of Ukraine eliminated fifth-seeded Tereza Valentova of the Czech Republic 7-6 (4), 6-3 — meaning both Czech players fell on home soil.
After dropping the first set, Tagger broke Krejcikova’s serve to move ahead 4-2 in the second set, then broke again in the fourth game of the third set before closing out the match by winning the last three points of the tiebreaker.
In the Snigur-Valentova match, both players traded service breaks twice in the opening set before Snigur won the tiebreaker’s final four points. Snigur then broke Valentova’s serve twice in the second set, including a decisive break to go up 5-3 and eventually serve out the match.
