(Montreal) When they woke up from their sleep on Friday morning, Liudmila Samsonova and Belinda Bencic had every right to expect a long and hard day, which would benefit only one of them. The big winner will have been Samsonova.
After spending nearly three hours on center court at IGA Stadium in her afternoon round of 16 match, the 24-year-old Russian took another step forward at the National Bank Tennis Open following her victory in two sets of 6-4, 6-4 against the Swiss Belinda Bencic.
The duel, which ended shortly after 11 p.m., lasted 1 hour 49 minutes and was hotly contested.
It comes down to the two breaks of service that Samsonova went for, the first in the seventh game of the opening set and the second in the ninth game of the second set, when Bencic committed his fourth double fault of the match.
Trailing 5-4, Bencic tried hard to prevent her opponent from ending the duel, even taking a 30-15 lead on Samsonova’s serve. The latter responded by earning the next three points, the last when Bencic returned a powerful serve from Samsonova into the net.
In the semi-final on Saturday evening, Samsonova will face the winner of the last duel of the day on Friday, between Daria Kasatkina and Elena Rybakina. A duel that began at 11:25 p.m.
