By Chris Oddo | Friday April 7, 2017
Jelena Ostapenko reached the semifinals on her Charleston debut by defeating Caroline Wozniacki in straight sets on Friday.
Photo Source: Christopher Levy
Caroline Wozniacki was one match from returning to the WTA’s Top 10 for the first time since September of 2015, but Jelena Ostapenko had other ideas on Friday at the Volvo Car Open.
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The explosive Latvian ended Wozniacki’s week with a 6-2, 6-4 victory to book a semifinal with Mirjana Lucic-Baroni on Saturday.
Ostapenko walloped 40 winners to just 14 for Wozniacki and she saved four of five break points to take out the No.5-seeded Dane in one hour and 26 minutes.
Wozniacki, who had to win two matches on Thursday to reach the semis because of a cancelled match due to rain on Wednesday, had high praise for the power of the 19-year-old World No. 66.
"I was trying to grind everything down. I tried to change the pace when I had the opportunity, but I mean if she played like this every day, then she would be No.1 in the world,” Wozniacki said. "She really played well. She went for her shots. Everything was going in. She was hitting the lines. Everything that could go her way today was going her way.”
In the previous quarterfinal on Friday, Mirjana Lucic-Baroni came back from a set down to end the run of hometown favorite Shelby Rogers, 6-7(7), 6-1, 6-1.
Ostapenko defeated Lucic-Baroni in straight sets in their only previous meeting at Auckland this January.
Saturday’s first semifinal will feature Russia’s Daria Kasatkina and Germany’s Laura Siegemund.
Kasatkina reached her first semifinal of the season with a 6-4, 6-1 victory over No.10-seeded Irina-Camelia Begu. Siegemund slid past No.8-seeded Anastasija Sevastova, 6-2, 6-4.