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Teenager Mira Andreeva reached her first Madrid Open final with a 6-4 7-6 (10-8) win over Hayley Baptiste.
The 19-year-old Russian will face 26th seed Marta Kostyuk in Saturday’s final, after the Ukrainian beat Austria’s Anastasia Potapova 6-2 1-6 6-1.
Ninth-seeded Andreeva has won all 13 of her clay-court matches this season, winning the title in Linz and reaching the semifinals in Stuttgart to become the first teenager to reach three WTA 1000 finals.
After taking the first set against the 30th seed, Andreeva served for the match at 5–4, but was broken by Baptiste who took the second set in a tiebreak.
24-year-old American, who Defeated world number one Arina Sabalenka In the previous round, Andreeva saved three set points before completing her victory.
“Honestly, I feel a lot of adrenaline inside. I think I’m still nervous. I’m very happy that I won and I saved all those set points,” said Andreeva, who became the second-youngest finalist in the history of the tournament, behind Caroline Wozniacki.
“The service helped me a lot. I’m so happy, I can’t find a way to describe what I’m feeling now,” added Andreeva.
Kostyuk reached her first WTA 1000 final in an error-prone match against lucky loser Potapova, winning the first set in two breaks but losing the second in 30 minutes.
The 23-year-old led 4-0 in the decision and refused to shake hands with his Russian-born opponent after the match was stopped.
In the men’s tournament, defending champion Kasper Ruud was defeated by Belgium’s Alexandre Blokx 6–4 6–4 in the quarterfinals.
Unseeded Blockx, who broke into the top 100 for the first time only last month and is ranked a career-high 69th in the world, knocked off four straight seeds, including third-seeded Felix Auger-Aliasime, in the Spanish capital.
Rudd, 21, defeated the Norwegian 21st seed in 96 minutes and will now face Alexander Zverev in his first tour-level semi-final, having never won a tour match on clay before this season.
Two-time Madrid champion Zverev won 6-1 6-4 against Italian 10th seed Flavio Cobolli, who beat the German en route to the Munich final 12 days ago and has now reached the semi-finals in seven of his past eight Masters 1000 tournaments.
Top seed Janic Ciner will face 21st seed Arthur Fils in Friday’s other semi-final after the pair won their quarter-finals on Wednesday.
