Paris \u2013 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).<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Bueno, who passed away in 2018, made the last four in Paris in 1966 before the advent of the Open era.<\/p>\n
“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.<\/p>\n
Jabeur, the runner-up at Wimbledon and the US Open in 2022, was playing in her first quarterfinal at Roland Garros.<\/p>\n
The Tunisian hit 15 winners as she claimed an opening set that featured five breaks of serve in nine games.<\/p>\n
Haddad Maia had never got past the second round of a Grand Slam before this French Open.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Haddad Maia then swept into a 3-0 lead in the decider, saved four break points to stretch to a 5-1 advantage,\u00a0and took the match.<\/p>\n
“I had a day off after my fourth-round match. My amazing team worked hard on my body,” said the Brazilian.<\/p>\n
“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.<\/p>\n
Any reproduction of this content is prohibited.<\/strong><\/p>\n Translated by El\u00fasio Brasileiro<\/strong><\/p>\n