Leylah Fernandez recovered from a lopsided opening set to defeat Maja Chwalinska 1-6, 6-4, 6-2 on Saturday, booking her place in the Singapore Tennis Open final.
The sixth-seeded Canadian will meet Australia’s Talia Gibson in the championship match, with Fernandez seeking her sixth WTA Tour singles title and Gibson appearing in her first tour-level final.
Quick facts
- Semifinal: No. 6 seed Leylah Fernandez beat No. 5 seed Maja Chwalinska 1-6, 6-4, 6-2.
- Match duration: 2 hours, 8 minutes.
- Fernandez struck 31 winners and won 22 of 37 trips to the net.
- Gibson reached the final after Tatiana Prozorova withdrew with a concussion.
- The Singapore final is Fernandez’s ninth on the WTA Tour and Gibson’s first.
Chwalinska, contesting only the second tour-level semifinal of her career, made a blistering start in her first meeting with Fernandez. The French Open runner-up took the first five games and reeled off 15 straight points before Fernandez got on the board, eventually closing the set 6-1.
Fernandez altered the momentum immediately in the second set. The 2021 US Open finalist won the first eight points, moving ahead 2-0 before Chwalinska broke back to draw level at 3-3.
The Canadian kept pressing from the baseline and used frequent forward movement to disrupt Chwalinska’s rhythm. She edged the second set 6-4, sending the semifinal into a deciding set.
Chwalinska had a chance to seize early control in the third, holding a break point that would have put her 2-0 up. Fernandez escaped that danger, held for 1-1 and then took command with two breaks of serve.
A backhand winner completed Fernandez’s comeback after 2 hours and 8 minutes. While she finished with 43 unforced errors, compared with 28 from Chwalinska, her aggressive approach produced 31 winners against the Pole’s 15.
Fernandez has won all five of her WTA singles trophies on hard courts, the same surface used in Singapore. She now gets a first career meeting with Gibson, who progressed without playing her semifinal after Prozorova’s concussion withdrawal.
