Samantha Stosur thrashed American Madison Keys on Saturday to set up a clash with another teenager in the final of the WTA’s Japan Open.
Stosur outclassed 18-year-old Keys, who was aged just four when Stosur turned professional in 1999, taking only 61 minutes to triumph 6-1 6-2 at the Utsubo Tennis Centre in Osaka.
The third-seeded Australian now faces another one of the tour’s brightest young talents, Canadian Eugenie Bouchard, in Sunday’s decider.
World No.35 and sixth seed Bouchard, 19, advanced to her first WTA final with an equally dominant 6-2 6-2 victory over unseeded Japanese wildcard Kurumi Nara.
The 29-year-old Stosur faced only three break points against Keys – all in the fifth game of the first set. She came back from 0-40 to go up 4-1, then broke world No.39 Keys for the second time before serving out the set.
Keys, playing in her first WTA semi-final, won the opening game of the second set, but Stosur got two service breaks to sew up the match.
Stosur, whose rank has dropped from a season-opening No.9 to her current No.20, won in her only other trip to a final this year when she beat then world No.3 Victoria Azarenka at the Southern California Open in early August.
The 35th-ranked Bouchard and Stosur faced each other for the first and only time last April in Charleston, where the Canadian won when Stosur retired due to injury while trailling 6-1 2-0.
Stosur’s passage to the decider in Osaka was helped by the withdrawal of top seed Jelena Jankovic just before the tournament started and second seed Sabine Lisicki pulled out of her second-round clash against Polona Hercog due to injury.