Paris – Brazilian tennis player Bia Haddad Maia, world number 14, qualified for the Roland Garros semifinal after winning a challenging match against Tunisian Ons Jabeur this Wednesday (7).
The 27-year-old player came back from a set down and closed the game 2-1 (3-6, 7-6 [7/5], and 6-1) in two hours and 29 minutes.
The last time a Brazilian had reached the semifinals of a women’s Grand Slam was with Maria Esther Bueno at the 1968 US Open.
Bueno, who passed away in 2018, made the last four in Paris in 1966 before the advent of the Open era.
“Ons is not easy to play against, you have to be patient, but I believed in my body and tried to keep my rhythm,” said Haddad Maia after the match on the Philippe-Chatrier court.
Jabeur, the runner-up at Wimbledon and the US Open in 2022, was playing in her first quarterfinal at Roland Garros.
The Tunisian hit 15 winners as she claimed an opening set that featured five breaks of serve in nine games.
Haddad Maia had never got past the second round of a Grand Slam before this French Open.
She had saved a match point in the third round against Ekaterina Alexandrova and then defeated Sara Sorribes Tormo in a three-hour 51-minute marathon, the third-longest women’s match ever played at the tournament.
She summoned all that fighting spirit in the second set against Jabeur, holding her nerve on a fourth set point. In the “tie break,” the Brazilian won 7-5.
Haddad Maia then swept into a 3-0 lead in the decider, saved four break points to stretch to a 5-1 advantage, and took the match.
“I had a day off after my fourth-round match. My amazing team worked hard on my body,” said the Brazilian.
“We work hard all year to be in these moments, so I remembered this when we were in the middle of the second set,” she concluded.
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Translated by Elúsio Brasileiro
