Garbine Muguruza and Sofia Kenin will clash in one of the more unlikely Australian Open finals after fashioning two stirring upsets on a dramatic afternoon at Melbourne Park.
Rod Laver Arena was barely half full for Muguruza’s fighting 7-6 (8-6) 7-5 win over Wimbledon champion Simona Halep after Kenin broke Australian hearts with a sobering straight-sets victory over misfiring world No.1 Ashleigh Barty.
The shell-shocked crowd piled out after Kenin, the 14th seed but with credentials much better than that, saved four set points – two in each set – to stun Barty 7-6 (8-6) 7-5 in blazing heat.
But while the two scorelines were identical, their winners’ celebrations couldn’t have been more stark.
Kenin was overjoyed, almost disbelieving, after snapping Barty’s nine-match summer winning streak to reach her maiden grand slam final.
“Honestly, I’m so speechless. I honestly can’t believe this. I’ve dreamed about this moment since I was five years old,” said the Moscow-born Floridian, now 21.
The resurgent Muguruza was more circumspect.
Unseeded for the first time at a slam for the first time in almost six years, the former Wimbledon and French Open champion was keeping a lid on her emotions.
“You start day by day. That’s what I was doing – each match at a time,” the 26-year-old said, having arrived two weeks ago with modest expectations.
“I’m very excited to be in the final but it’s a long way to go and I have one more match on Saturday.”
But like Kenin, Muguzura also fought back from 5-3 down in the second set to reel off four straight games and the match against Halep, who had stormed to the last four without dropping a set.
“I wasn’t thinking that I was down. I was thinking to keep going, at some point you will have your opportunity,” Muguruza said.
“I know I was facing Simona so I know it was going to be a hard match and I was just hanging in there and fighting with all the energy I had.”
Contesting her fourth grand slam final, 26-year-old Muguruza beat Kenin in three sets in their only previous encounter, last October in Beijing.