Kenin overcomes Collins to make Roland Garros semis

PARIS, France – No.4 seed Sofia Kenin won an all-American battle with Danielle Collins to move through to the semifinals of the French Open with a 6-4, 4-6, 6-0 victory.

The Australian Open champion had not made a WTA Tour-level clay court quarterfinal previously but produced a typically solid performance to overcome the WTA World No.57, who had won all three previous encounters between the pair, including two at ITF level, without dropping a set.

After going the distance in three of her previous four matches, she again went the scenic route against a rival whose fourth-round encounter with Ons Jabeur was pushed back 24 hours to Tuesday on account of the Parisian rain.

Collins, who had hit more winners than any other player in the tournament ahead of the quarters, was unable to blast her way past the 21-year-old, whose consistency and focus won through in two hours four minutes.

The opening set was dominated by serve, though the opportunities that did arise went in favor of Kenin., whose doubles challenge with Bethanie Mattek-Sands was ended at the quarterfinal stage on Wednesday. 

“I’m super happy. I know she plays really aggressive and I knew I needed to play aggressive myself, have a high first-serve percentage and I think I did that,” she said, reflecting upon an encounter in which she hit 38 winners to only 26 unforced errors before considering her speciality of going the distance pulling through.

“The difference is definitely mental. I like winning in three sets! I know it’s going to be tough but I got the win and I’m proud of myself.”

Although Collins held to love in the opening game, she would face a single break point in each of her subsequent three turns on serve. She saved the first and third, but these sandwiched a break to love that proved to be the differentiating factor in an otherwise highly competitive set.

Indeed, Collins had a positive ratio of winners to unforced errors, hitting 16 past her opponent to 15 miscues, but it was Kenin who was the steadier of the players. 

This was emphasized in the opening game of the second set, in which the 26-year-old delivered a trio of double faults in succession from 30-0 up to put herself in a complicated situation that she successfully wriggled out of.

In the following game, she put the Kenin serve under major pressure for the first time, working her way to 15-40. She was unable to convert either of her first two break points of the match, however.

When the breakthrough came, it was the younger player who got it off the back of a loose game from Collins, yet this sparked an aggressive response from the underdog, whose aggressive hitting allowed her to immediately level.

She carried this mindset all the way to four set points in the 10th game, though she was not simply bludgeoning the ball, but showing plenty of variety and intelligence in her hitting. Indeed, it was a drop-lob combination that yielded the set point from which she levelled the match.

Kenin, though, made an express start to the decider, aided by her opponent suffering something of a hangover from her second-set success, culminating in a double fault to be broken. 

The set continued to race in Kenin’s favor as she punched away a second serve with a crosscourt backhand winner, the type of which had been a reliable weapon in her artillery throughout, to move into a 3-0 advantage.

With Collins ailing with an apparent stomach issue, Kenin broke again then completed the bagel to set up a semifinal against Petra Kvitova, an opponent she lost to in Madrid last year.