Madrid (AFP)
World No. 1 Ashleigh Barty qualified for her fourth final of the year at the expense of surprise Spanish guest Paola Badosa (62nd) in straight sets 6-4, 6-3 at the Madrid tournament on Thursday.
Badosa (23), recipient of an invitation and for the first time in the last four of a WTA 1000 tournament, stood up to Barty up to 4 games throughout the first set.
Then the Australian made the difference, helped by a double fault from the Spanish on her third set point, and despite a break conceded from the start of the second set, to win in just over an hour and a quarter.
In the final, the winner of Roland-Garros 2019 will face either Belarusian Aryna Sabalenka or Russian Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, opposed in the evening.
Barty won the first three finals she played in 2021: in Melbourne before the Australian Open, and since traveling to the circuit again despite the Covid-19, in Miami in early April and in Stuttgart ( Germany) ten days ago, already on ocher.
Last year, in the midst of a pandemic, the Australian preferred, as a health precaution, to stay on her relatively untouched island-continent when the circuit had resumed its rights in the heart of summer.
She did not return to competition until last January.
In 2021, Barty has an excellent record of 26 wins and three losses.
One of his three losses was inflicted on him by Badosa, in the quarterfinals of Charleston (United States) a month ago.
On European clay, she stretches to sixteen her series of successes in a row, which has been running since her coronation in Paris, with her qualification for the Madrid final.
© 2021 AFP