Alexandrova, Sorribes Tormo to square off in Cleveland final

No.4 seed Ekaterina Alexandrova and lucky loser Sara Sorribes Tormo will face off on Saturday in the Tennis in the Land singles championship match.

Alexandrova clinched a spot in her second final of the year by defeating Zhu Lin 7-5, 6-2 in Friday's first semifinal.

It took World No.22 Alexandrova 1 hour and 21 minutes to oust 48th-ranked Zhu in their first career meeting. Alexandrova had seven aces and won 78 percent of her first-service points in the clash.

"It was quite a difficult match because I think semifinal matches, they're never easy," Alexandrova said afterwards. "I had a break early in the first set, but I couldn't keep it unfortunately, so it was 5-5 and a really shaky situation. I was able to manage to find a way back."

Alexandrova is now a win away from her fifth career WTA singles title and her second title of the year. The 28-year-old successfully defended her grass-court title in 's-Hertogenbosch earlier this summer.

"I think maybe the start of the year wasn't as great as expected, but I was able to manage to find [my] game in the middle of this year, and I want to keep it the same way, keep it as long as possible," Alexandrova said.

In the evening semifinal, Sorribes Tormo grabbed a 6-4, 6-3 win to end the seven-match winning streak of Tatjana Maria and claim a spot in her second career WTA singles final. Sorribes Tormo won her previous WTA final, taking the title at the WTA 250 in Guadalajara in 2021.

World No.49 Maria came into the event having just won last week's WTA 125 Barranquilla title, but Sorribes Tormo snapped the German's run with a 1-hour and 53-minute victory.

Sorribes Tormo, who has been ranked as high as No.32 but is currently ranked No.95, lost in the final round of qualifying to Clara Burel. However, the Spaniard has been sterling once she got her spot in the main draw, where she has not yet dropped a set.

Only five lucky losers in history have won WTA singles titles -- but Sorribes Tormo is aiming to be the third in just the last two months. Maria Timofeeva in Budapest and Nao Hibino in Prague have both pulled off the rare feat already this summer.

Sorribes Tormo won her only previous meeting with Alexandrova, but it was nearly seven years ago, in Linz qualifying in 2016.