Maria Kirilenko def. Dinara Safina, 6-3, 6-3The 23-year-old Kirilenko played a composed and intelligent match, mixing up the pace of her shots, and finding the angles to move Safina around the court. Safina, lacking confidence from her reduced match play this year, was tentative in the second set. Down two breaks of serve at 1-4 in the second set, Safina again requested on-court coaching. Dinara started to play more aggressively late in the second set, while Kirilenko began to struggle with her own serve, hitting two double faults to give back one of the service breaks. But it proved too little too late for Safina, and Kirilenko advanced to her first Semifinal of the year, 6-3, 6-3.
- Dinara Safina fell to an in-form Maria Kirilenko
Elena Dementieva def. Marion Bartoli, 6-3, 3-6, 6-2
Elena Dementieva accepted a wildcard into the Pilot Pen to get in some extra match play before the US Open, and her plan has been realized. For the second straight day, Dementieva was involved in a three-set, three-hour marathon match. Having escaped Kateryna Bondarenko in the Second Round, on Thursday Dementieva faced off against the tournament's No. 6 seed, Marion Bartoli of France.
This is the eighth time the two players have met. Entering this match, Dementieva held a 5-2 edge in their head-to-head, including a 3-0 record on hard courts. But the 28-year-old tour veteran has fallen on hard times recently. She had to retire from her French Open semifinal match against Francesca Schiavone with a calf injury. That injury forced her to withdraw from Wimbledon as well. After failing to defend her Rogers Cup title in Canada, Dementieva dropped out of the top 10 for the first time since April 2008.
The Russian started strong in the first set, breaking Bartoli's serve in four of five games. Bartoli donated to the cause, serving seven double faults. Nevertheless, the set was closely contested, lasting just over an hour before Dementieva closed it out, 6-3. The two players continued to drop serve in the second set. An early 2-0 lead for Bartoli disappeared quickly, but the Frenchwoman broke again in the fifth game, and managed to hold on to the advantage and take the set, 6-3, forcing a third set.
Dementieva started the third set more focused and with renewed purpose. Sensing that Bartoli was tiring, Dementieva kept her groundstrokes deep and moved her opponent along the baseline. Her strategy was effective, and she easily took the third set 6-2, advancing to the Semifinals. Awaiting Dementieva is the two-time defending champion and top seed, Caroline Wozniacki, who advanced when her quarterfinal opponent Flavia Pennetta withdrew.
- Marion Bartoli played and lost her third consecutive quarterfinal this week
Sergiy Stakhovsky def. Marcos Baghdatis, 5-7, 6-1, 7-6(4)
Last year at this time, former Top 10 player Marcos Baghdatis found himself ranked outside of the world's Top 100. He needed a wildcard to get into the New Haven draw, and missed the ranking cut off for acceptance into the US Open. To add insult to injury, he lost to a qualifier in his opening round match of the 2009 Pilot Pen Tennis. But in the past year, Baghdatis has won Tour events in Stockholm and Sydney, and on two occasions has defeated the top-ranked ATP player in 2010 – Roger Federer in Indian Wells, and Rafael Nadal last week in Cincinnati. On the strength of those results, Baghdatis, the 25-year-old from Cyprus, came into this year's Pilot Pen as the top seed.
His quarterfinal opponent Thursday night was Sergiy Stakhovsky, the Ukrainian who has won two Tour events himself in the past year (St. Petersburg and 's-Hertogenbosch). Stakhovsky had a difficult journey to tonight's match. His third round match against the No. 6 seed Tommy Robredo was halted by rain late last night, and he had to return to the grounds early this morning to win it for the right to play Baghdatis.
The busy schedule didn't deter Stakhovsky; he used his full arsenal of shots to fend off Baghdatis. Baghdatis drew first blood, breaking serve in the eleventh game of the opening set, and holding off break points on his own serve to take it, 7-5. But the low slice backhands and drop shots from Stakhovsky started to pay off in the second set. He quickly jumped to a 4-0 lead, and, a few games later, the match was tied at one set apiece.
The final set remained close, with several entertaining rallies between the two players. They traded service breaks in the seventh and eighth games, but ultimately the match came down to a tiebreak in the final set. Ninth-seeded Stakhovsky's all-court game proved to be too much for Baghdatis, still weary from his semifinal finish in Cincinnati last week. Stakhovsky won the tiebreaker, sevenpoints to four . Stakhovsky advances to the Semifinals where he will meet Thiemo de Bakker of the Netherlands.
- Marcos Baghdatis speaking to the media after losing the match
Around the grounds...
With the withdrawal of Flavia Pennetta, Caroline Wozniacki not only advances to the Semifinals, but wins the 2010 Olympus US Open Series.... While Dementieva has spent over six hours on court, Wozniacki has logged just over an hour of court time in New Haven ... Pennetta, a semifinalist here last year, withdrew because of an inflamed toe on her right foot, and hopes to rest and be ready for the US Open next week... Denis Istomin, the No. 15 seed, was a winner today over Teymuraz Gabashvili in a third set tiebreaker. The two could face off in the Second Round of the US Open if Gabashvili can pull off the unlikely upset over world No.1 Rafael Nadal in the First Round... After breaking serve in the opening game, second-seeded Sam Stosur could win only three more points on Nadia Petrova's serve. The eighth-seeded Russian advanced easily in 53 minutes, 6-2, 6-1.
MORE PHOTOS FROM THURSDAY AT THE 2010 PILOT PEN
Photos by Jack Cunniff and Mariya Konovalova