Sara’s momentum keeps going on: her perfomance at the Abierto Monterrey has been on point the whole week – which is good considering the approaching first two Premier Mandatories of the year – even thought she had to surrender in semifinals.

Third consecutive win in straight sets for Sarita: aftet Davis and Babos, it was the Russian  Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova who had to leave the court before her (7-5, 6-4).

It was a match full of breaks – 14 in total – 8 in favor of Sara and 6 for her opponent, of which the one occurred on 4-4 crucial to close the match. This is Sara’s second semifinal within the last 3 tournaments, the first one after the Open GDF Suez of Parigi (February 2014). On the other side of the net Timea Bacsinszky: the Swiss, n°31 in the ranking, extends her winning streak started with Acapulco’s title. The records between the two players is 1-1. Sara won their last match hosted on Rome’s clay, where her opponent retired at 6-0, 3-0.

Tough start for Sara who can not keep even her first serve, so letting Bacsinszky have the chance to rush and close the set with a triple break advantage. Altough very different from the second set, when Sara puts every bit of her determination on court to try and succeed in counteracting her opponent’s game and taking hers to another level, forcing the Swiss to take difficult shots and break twice on 3rd and 5th game. Unfortunately the Helvetian is not yet ready to bite the dust and manages to put up a fight until her surrender in the last 15-minutes game.

Final set: as soon as Sara saw any weakness signs coming from the other side of the net she kept pushing every stroke until tie-break. At 3-3 a sequence of unlucky rallies hits Sara and gives   Bacsinszky the last 4 consecutive points to close the match and rush to the tournament finals (0-6, 6-4, (3)6-7).