MOSCOW, January 22 (R-Sport) – Russia’s Ekaterina Makarova and Elena Vesnina reached their first Australian Open tennis doubles final Wednesday, winning a three-set battle with Raquel Kops-Jones and Abigail Spears of the United States.
The French Open champions repeated the scenario of their quarter-final match, losing the second set before winning the decider to take a 7-5, 3-6, 6-3 victory in 2 hours 13 minutes.
The Russians, seeded third, will compete for the title in the final against reigning champions Sara Errani and Roberta Vinci, who defeated them in last year’s semi-final.
“We are very glad to reach the final,” Vesnina said in comments via the Russian Tennis Federation. “It was an unreal match, our opponents showed great tennis. We won the first set, but then we lost a couple of bitter games and fell to pieces. It’s great we managed to come back and eventually prevail.”
The women’s singles event will have a new champion after last year’s winner Viktoria Azarenka of Belarus was beaten by Agnieszka Radwanska in the quarter-final.
After losing three career quarter-finals in Melbourne, fifth seed Radwanska finally made it to the next stage by prevailing 6-1, 5-7, 6-0 over Azarenka. She will face another surprise package, Slovakia's Dominika Cibulkova, in the semi-final.
World No. 24 Cibulkova will play her second Grand Slam semi-final, after the French Open in 2009, after easing past 11th seed Simona Halep of Romania 6-3, 6-0.
The men’s world No. 1 Rafael Nadal survived a scare when he lost the first set and had to survive three set points in the third on his way to a 3-6, 7-6(3), 7-6(7), 6-2 victory over Grigor Dimitrov of Bulgaria.
In the semis, the Spaniard will face either last year’s runner-up Andy Murray or four-time Australian Open champion Roger Federer.
