Ashleigh Barty beats Angelique Kerber to reach WTA Elite Trophy semi-finals in Zhuhai
Twenty-one-year-old Barty is the youngest player at the season-ending tournament in China
Twenty-one-year-old Barty, the youngest player at the season-ending tournament in China, needed just one hour and 11 minutes to down her German opponent 6-3, 6-4 at Zhuhai’s Hengqin International Tennis Centre.
It follows an impressive victory over fourth seed Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova of Russia on Wednesday, also in straight sets.
“I felt like I served great today,” Barty said after Thursday’s match.
“I put myself in a good position in my service games to then be super-aggressive and nice and clear when returning so I can, you know, have a little bit more of a crack and then see if I can get some of those early breaks in the sets.”
Barty got off to an impressive start against eighth seed Kerber, securing a break in the sixth game and then firing an ace to win the set.
The pair’s sole previous meeting was in Brisbane in January when Kerber, then world number one and the reigning Australian and US Open champion, survived a big scare from the Australian wild card entry.
“It was a bit of a full circle for us, with the start and the end of the season. But, no, I felt like I was in a very different situation this time around,” Barty said.
The 2011 junior Wimbledon champion has enjoyed a resurgence since returning to tennis in 2016 after a spell with the Brisbane Heat cricket team.
She reached her first Premier 5 tournament final in Wuhan in September after crushing French Open winner Jelena Ostapenko of Latvia, but ultimately fell to Caroline Garcia.
Later Thursday, Latvian fifth seed Anastasija Sevastova overpowered Czechoslovakia’s Barbora Strycova 6-3, 6-4.
Sevastova, on a career-high ranking of world number 15, also hammered US Open champion Sloane Stephens on Wednesday – leaving the American with her third successive defeat since winning the US Open.
But Coco Vandeweghe, the number two seed, also from the US, managed to triumph over Russia’s Elena Vesnina in the final singles match of the day with a score of 6-3, 6-2.
The results mean Vandeweghe and Sevastova have also booked their spots in the semis of the round-robin tournament.