Our second Semi Final match featured Elena Malygina and Lauryn John-Baptiste. Elena Malygina notably had, up till now, only lost 12 games in a total of 6 sets. In other words, she is storming through the competition. John-Baptiste was also coming off a strong win against rival Eliz Maloney. The first set came and went, with John-Baptiste not quite finding her footing early on. The first set only took a grand total of 22 minutes for Malygina to finish. The momentum was firmly on the side of Malygina, the question was could she maintain it? That she very well could! The second set spelled equal brilliance from Malygina, she started strong breaking John-Baptiste to love in her first service game. However, John-Baptiste had a surge of power as she forced a few errors from Malygina gifting her a 15-40 lead in Malygina’s first game. Malygina, however, was able to dig deep and, after a few troubling points, pull through and consolidate the break. Malygina, from that moment on, was unstoppable; she went on to win the next 4 games in a row to seal the victory and win in straight sets 6-1, 6-1. It just wasn’t John-Baptiste’s day, she fought valiantly but the Estonian struck the ball with an astonishing amount of power and her unforced error count would be 8 at most. A truly brilliant display that ultimately begs the question- what can anyone do to stop her?
Watch all matches live on BT Sport Channel 2 or stream on the Tennis Channel.