The stakes weren’t nearly as high, but Madison Keys finally got a win against Sloane Stephens, who beat her in the 2017 U.S. Open final.
FILE PHOTO: Mar 9, 2019; Indian Wells, CA, USA; Madison Keys (USA) during her second round match against Mona Barthel (not pictured) in the BNP Paribas Open at the Indian Wells Tennis Garden. Mandatory Credit: Jayne Kamin-Oncea-USA TODAY Sports
Keys, the eighth seed, emerged with a 7-6 (6), 4-6, 6-2 victory Friday over top-seeded Stephens in an all-American quarterfinal at the Volvo Car Open in Charleston, S.C. It was Keys’ first win in four career meetings with Stephens.
Keys advances to a semifinal matchup with Puerto Rico’s Monica Puig, who routed 11th-seeded American Danielle Collins 6-3, 6-2 on the clay.
The other semifinal will feature fifth-seeded Dane Caroline Wozniacki and 16th-seeded Croatian Petra Martic. Wozniacki cruised past 15th-seeded Maria Sakkari of Greece 6-2, 6-2, and Martic topped ninth-seeded Belinda Bencic of Switzerland 6-3, 6-4.
Abierto GNP Segueros
Second-seeded Garbine Muguruza of Spain advanced to the semifinals at Monterrey, Mexico, beating seventh-seeded Kristina Mladenovic of France 6-1, 7-6 (5) in a match that featured an usual set.
Mladenovic lost each of her final three service games in the first set, and then Muguruza lost her serving touch in the second set, too. The second set featured eight service breaks, and a whopping 21 break points, before Muguruza ultimately won in a tiebreaker.
Muguruza’s semifinal opponent will be eighth-seeded Slovakian Magdalena Rybarikova, who beat American Sachia Vickery 6-4, 6-4.
The other two quarterfinal matches were scheduled for Friday night: top-seeded Angelique Kerber of Germany against No. 6 Kirsten Flipkens of Belgium, and fifth-seeded Victoria Azarenka of Belarus against No. 3 Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova of Russia.
—Field Level Media