Top seed Samantha Stosur reached her first final in eight months with a comeback 2-6 6-3 6-2 win over fourth-seeded Serbian Ana Ivanovic in the Kremlin Cup semi-finals on Saturday. The Australian will face another former world number one Caroline Wozniacki in Sunday's final after the Danish third seed beat unseeded Swede Sofia Arvidsson 6-3 6-7 6-4 in the first semi-final at the Olympic indoor arena.
After splitting the first two sets, 2011 US Open champion Stosur broke Ivanovic in the fifth game for a 3-2 lead after the Serbian missed an easy volley on break point Ivanovic took a medical break after falling behind but looked a shadow of her former self after coming back on court as Stosur reeled off the next three games for an easy victory.
Wozniacki had a much tougher time against her Scandinavian rival. She served for the match at 6-5 in the second set but 46th-ranked Arvidsson battled back to force a tiebreak. In the third set, the Dane again served for the match after pulling ahead 5-3 and missed her chance on her serve but she finally ended Arvidsson's resistance in the next game.
World number 11 Wozniacki, looking for her second WTA title of the season after winning the Korea Open last month, blamed the slow surface for her inability to finish the match. "It was very tough to finish off the point on this surface, especially because we know each other so well," she told reporters. "I had to raise my game in order to win today." Second seed Andreas Seppi faces Malek Jaziri, the first Tunisian player to reach the last four on the ATP Tour, while fourth-seeded Brazilian Thomaz Bellucci takes on giant Croatian Ivo Karlovic in the men's semi-finals later on Saturday.
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