No.7 seed
Iga Swiatek of Poland notched a breakthrough win over one of her toughest opponents in the Qatar TotalEnergies Open semifinals on Friday, defeating No.6 seed Maria Sakkari of Greece 6-4, 6-3.
Following the match, Swiatek was very emotional sitting down on her chair and getting overwhelmed by the occasion. After she calmed down and stepped on to do the post-match press conference, Swiatek was more excited than anything else:
"Really excited. For sure I showed consistency throughout the whole tournament, and I'm really happy that I could keep my level of tennis at a really high level."
It was an important match for Swiatke who never defeated Sakkari before and these types of wins bring her a lot of confidence. She said:
"These matches when I play against players that I really didn't have a good head-to-head before, it shows I did a good job changing that. It's like a brand new start for me. Even though I have been on tour and my opponents are the same, I feel like these tournaments are different. That's really great for me."
On facing Kontaveit, she said:
"I
felt like [Kontaveit and I] always had good rhythm maybe on court, and
that's why the rallies were long. We were kind of even
in everything. I don't know how it's going to be right now, because the last match I
played against her was basically before she had that great streak at
the end of last year. I'll be ready for anything, honestly. Every match
is a different story."