Roland-Garros Karolina Muchova reaches the semi-finals for the first time in her career

(Paris) Karolina Muchova has reached the semi-finals of the French Tennis Open for the first time in her career.

The unseeded Czech got the better of 2021 tournament runner-up Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova 7-5, 6-2 in the quarterfinals on Tuesday.

She had never passed the third round at Roland-Garros.

Pavlyuchenkova took more than three hours to win her previous match, and the Russian looked tired early in the match, as she struggled to find her bearings and conceded plenty of points without a real fight.

She tried to pull herself together by exploiting her powerful forehand, but her hopes of orchestrating a comeback were dashed when she found herself down 1-4 in the second set following another messy forehand. .

Pavlyuchenkova has missed most of the 2022 season due to a knee injury. Under its 333^e place in the world, she nevertheless became the lowest-ranked player in the modern era to reach the quarter-finals at Roland-Garros — and she became the lowest-ranked player to reach this stage of the competition in a Grand Slam tournament since 2017.

Muchova has also been plagued by injuries and abdominal discomfort that forced her to rest for six months after the 2021 U.S. Open. She also injured her ankle during her third-round match at the Open. from France last year.

Muchova will make the semi-finals of a major tournament for the second time in her career, having found herself in the semi-finals at the Australian Open in 2021. There she will face Australian Open champion Aryna Sabalenka, who beat Elina Svitolina 6-4, 6-4 in Tuesday’s other quarter-final match.

Sabalenka is from Belarus, and Svitolina — playing her first Grand Slam tournament since becoming a mother — is Ukrainian. Belarus helped invade Ukraine in February 2022, and the war is still ongoing. As is the case with all players from Ukraine, including Sabalenka’s first-round opponent in Paris last week, Svitolina does not shake hands with players from Belarus or Russia after games. It happened again on Tuesday.

On the men’s side, favorite Carlos Alcaraz and Novak Djokovic could meet in the semi-finals of the tournament, provided they each triumph on Tuesday.

Djokovic, who has won 22 career Grand Slam titles, will face the 11^e seeded Karen Khachanov on the Philippe-Chatrier court. Alcaraz, who won the US Open last year, will face off against fifth-seeded Stefanos Tsitsipas, a two-time Grand Slam finalist.