Barty irresistible in crushing Krejcikova
Ash Barty has maintained her blistering form at the Cincinnati Open, the Wimbledon champion winning a classy battle of wits to outplay French Open winner Barbora Krejcikova and race into the semi-finals.
The world No.1, who seems to be growing in confidence by the match as she homes in on a fifth title of the year, overcame some second-set resistance from the Czech before reeling off four straight games to storm to a 6-2 6-4 victory in just 71 minutes on Friday.
Nobody on tour has been in hotter form than Krejcikova, who had won 25 of her previous 27 matches going into the match, but Barty, who suffered a big let-down at the Tokyo Olympics, has seemingly now picked up where she left off at Wimbledon, her all-court mastery seemingly irresistible.
The pair were quickly involved in a match for the purist with the outstanding variety of their game on show in chess-like probing, but though Krejcikova has raced into the world's top 10 over the past couple of months, she again found a rejuvenated Barty a very different kettle of fish.
Just as on the Wimbledon grass where Barty had dismantled the Czech in the round-of-16 last month, the Queenslander's wicked backhand slice and pinpoint returning on the hard-court soon made life troublesome for the Roland Garros winner as she was broken twice in a 31-minute opening set.
Krejcikova, though, found her steel at the start of the second set, earning her first break with a rifled service return to Barty's feet that the Aussie couldn't dig out.
"Barbora served exceptionally well early in that second set and was able to take advantage of that service game of mine where I just hit too many second serves," conceded Barty.
"So I wanted to get a little more positive on her service games and try and get myself in the points a little bit more, and I was happy to do that and to run away with that one in the end."
Three glorious winners in a game saw the Australian break back for 4-4 before her constant pressure drew increasing numbers of errors from the Czech's racquet and she wrapped up a consummate win, her seventh win in eight encounters with top-10 players in 2021.
Following her destruction of another grand slam champion Victoria Azarenka in the last-16, the Queenslander has now set up a last-four meeting with either Germany's Angelique Kerber or another Czech Petra Kvitova on Saturday.
