(Tennis news) Iga Swiatek reached the last four for the first time at the Qatar TotalEnergies Open in Doha. Swiatek had lost her only previous meeting against Aryna Sabalenka but this time it was a formidable performance as she will face Maria Sakkari for a place in the final.

The top seed lost the first three games of the match, she seemed motivated even though she was down 2-4 as there was no halt on celebrations. The 20 year old on the other side was not very vocal when winning points as a clenched fist was more than enough, Swiatek had steady groundstrokes which was not fast but was very effective. Sabalenka did crush some of the groundstrokes but it came to use once or twice in a game.

In the second set, the world number 2 took the first three games with her hard hitting groundstrokes which affected her rival’s game for the first time in the match. Sabalenka’s sliced strokes were consistently getting hit for winners by Swiatek even from her backhand, the Belarusian could not never anticipate where the ball was going to go after slicing it. The world number 8 started hitting more and more winners as the match went in her favour as she took the next 6 games for the win. Swiatek defeated Sabalenka 6-2, 6-3.

"This match is going to give me a lot of confidence," Swiatek said in her post-match press conference. "I'm very happy that tactically I did a great job, and my mental game was also on point. That's the most important thing for me, because from the beginning I wanted to be aggressive and to be focusing on myself and on my game."

Jelena Ostapenko was playing against Garbine Muguruza for the 5th time in her career and had only one victory which was in 2017. Ostapenko had only taken two sets in their previous meetings but was on a 8 match winning streak that started at Dubai and it did continue at Doha. There were rarely long rallies in the match as it was either a winner from Ostapenko or an unforced error from her as it was the Latvian who ended most of the rallies.

In the first set, the Spaniard was struggling to stop Ostapenko from attacking every possible ball as there was a slight comeback from Muguruza when she took 2 straight games. Other than the minor lag there was nothing to block the 24 year old who finished the set by hitting 2 return winners. In the second set, there was no fight from the former world number 1 as Ostapenko gave no chances to survive her onslaught. In total, the world number 13 hit 39 winners in the match while Muguruza hit 5 of them. Ostapenko defeated Muguruza 6-2, 6-2.

Also read: Ostapenko sets up rematch with Krejcikova at Doha, Kvitova issues walkover