Andrea Petkovic retired from her Qatar Open semi-final against Latvian teenager Jelena Ostapenko with a leg injury yesterday.
Petkovic quit when trailing 7-5, 1-0 with 18-year-old Ostapenko, a former Wimbledon Junior champion, set to meet Spain’s Carla Suarez Navarro in today’s final at Khalifa International Tennis and Squash Complex.
The pair met at Wimbledon last year when the Latvian surprisingly won in straight sets.
Petkovic, who dumped out fourth seed Garbine Muguruza in the quarter-finals on Thursday, retired after dropping her opening service game of the second set.
The German had stormed into a 5-1 lead at the beginning of the match, but the combination of her leg injury and an apparent problem with her back meant her advantage was quickly lost.
After losing her serve at 5-4 she then had 10 minutes of on-court medical treatment, during which her left thigh was heavily strapped.
But she could not delay the inevitable and lost the first set 7-5, before retiring one hour and 18 minutes into the match.
Ostapenko sympathised immediately afterwards, saying: “I am really sorry for Andrea, that she had to retire.”
In the evening’s first match, Suarez Navarro breezed past the highest seed left in the competition, Agnieszka Radwanska, dropping just two games in a 6-2, 6-0 victory.
In one of the best performances of her career, Suarez Navarro outthought and outplayed the WTA’s resident magician to run out a surprisingly comfortable 6-2, 6-0 winner.
After an even start, Suarez Navarro laid down a marker in the fifth game, flashing winners off either wing to get her nose in front. A few games later she had the insurance break before calmly serving out the set.
A nasty tumble in the first game of the second set briefly halted the Spaniard’s charge. But after dusting herself down, normal service was immediately resumed: a whipped cross-court forehand and then a wonderful instinctive volley handing her the break.
In stark contrast, Radwanska cut a forlorn figure, the brilliance that decorated her three-set victory over Roberta Vinci the previous evening conspicuous by its absence. The Pole’s mood darkened in the following game when she netted a routine forehand to spurn a rare break opportunity.
With Suarez Navarro’s groundstrokes now in full flow, Radwanska was soon put out of her misery, the final four games flying by in a flurry of winners.
“Today I feel really, really good,” Suarez Navarro, who hit 20 winners and just eight unforced errors, said. “I think also she was a little tired from yesterday.”
Suarez Navarro now has a chance for revenge after Ostapenko dumped her out of Wimbledon last year in a shock victory. The Latvian won 6-2, 6-0 in the opening round at the All England Club.
Suarez Navarro also reached the doubles final with partner Sara Errani, after the two beat Gabriela Dabrowski and Maria Jose Martinez Sanchez 6-1 6-4 yesterday.
The Spanish-Italian pair will face the fourth seed Taiwanese pair of Hao-Ching Chan and Yung-Jan Chan.
“I never play doubles if I think it doesn’t help to me. I mean, I know when I play doubles in one tournament, you can play two matches every day if you keep winning,” Suarez Navarro said. “I know that it’s tough. It’s different, but the doubles help me a lot.”