Doha, Feb 15 Going into the semifinal against Iga Swiatek, Jelena Ostapenko was confident of winning the match and progressing into the final of the Qatar Open here on Friday. Ostapenko maintained her record against Swiatek, scoring her fifth successive win with a straight-sets victory.
"I was pretty confident that I would beat her because we've played a lot of matches and I know how to play against her," former French Open winner Ostapenko said in her on-court interview after the match. "I was more focused on myself and what I had to do. I'm happy with the way I'm handling my emotions this week."
The Latvian Ostapenko defeated the No. 2 seed with an imperious 6-3, 6-1 victory in the semifinals, ending three-time defending champion Swiatek's 15-match winning streak at the tournament.
With this win, Ostapenko advanced to her 17th career WTA Tour final, second in Doha and fourth at WTA 1000 level or above (following Doha 2016, Roland Garros 2017, and Miami 2018). Her six-year, 321-day gap since the last of those is the longest between WTA 1000 finals since the format's inception in 2009.
The 27-year-old, who has not dropped a set yet this week, will face another unseeded player, Amanda Anisimova, for her biggest title since Roland Garros 2017. Their only previous meeting also took place in Doha, with Ostapenko taking their 2022 second-round clash 6-3, 4-6, 6-4.
The 2017 Roland Garros champion had reason to be so self-assured. She is the only active player with a winning head-to-head against Swiatek (with at least two matches played). Including retired players, only one other player can boast such a record -- former World No. 1 Ashleigh Barty, who was 2-0 against the Pole.
The 70-minute contest was Swiatek's quickest since she fell 6-0, 6-4 in 69 minutes to Garbiñe Muguruza in the 2021 Dubai second round, and her total of four games won the lowest since she lost 6-2, 6-2 to Elena Rybakina in the 2023 Indian Wells semifinals. You have to go back to 2019 to find a match in which Swiatek has won fewer than four games -- a 51-minute 6-0, 6-2 rout in the Birmingham first round at the hands of none other than Ostapenko.
That was their first meeting, and Ostapenko went on to triumph at Indian Wells 2021 before a pair of wins that bookended Swiatek's first reign as World No. 1. Her 4-6, 6-1, 7-6(4) triumph in the 2022 Dubai third round was Swiatek's last loss before ascending to the top spot and compiling a historic 37-match winning streak. Her 3-6, 6-3, 6-1 victory in the 2023 US Open fourth round meant that Swiatek ceded World No. 1 to Aryna Sabalenka for the first time.
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