Podoroska lost in two sets
Rosario Nadia Podoroska could not prolong her magical moment in Paris and was only two steps away from glory, falling today in one of the semifinals of Roland Garros, the third Grand Slam tournament of the year, against the Polish youth Iga Swiatek for a loose 6-2 and 6-1.
Podoroska, born in Rosario and ranked 131st in the WTA world rankings, could not take the initiative during the entire match and was easy prey for Swiatek (53), 19, to say goodbye to Roland Garros after 1 hour and 10 minutes of play, on the Philippe Chatrier center court of the complex located in the Parisian district of Bois de Boulogne.
The 23-year-old Rosario added an invaluable experience in the best performance of her career, which will bring her a promotion to 47th place in the world ranking that the WTA will announce next Monday, and also earnings of 420,250 euros that will allow her assume your next commitments more comfortable from the economic.
For her part, the Polish born in Warsaw confirmed all the good things she had hinted at when she eliminated the Romanian Simona Halep (2), 2018 Roland Garros champion, in the round of 16, and will take on a new challenge in the final on Saturday.
In the decisive match, the Pole will face the American Sofía Kenin (6), who beat the Czech Petra Kvitova (11) in the other semifinal of the Paris contest (11) by 6-4 and 7-5, after 1 hour and 46 minutes of confrontation.
Swiatek settled in the final without losing any set in the entire tournament and with a total of 150 winners (23 against Podoroska), although on Saturday he will meet a Grand Slam champion: Kenin, who this year won Australia.
For Podoroska it was the best two weeks of her career, as she entered the main draw from the classification and equaled four Argentine predecessors who had also been installed among the four best in Paris: Raquel Giscafré, Gabriela Sabatini, Clarisa Fernández and Paola Suárez, the most recent in 2004.
The Rosario born and raised in the Fisherton neighborhood suffered from the first game to the last, since she could never decipher the right of her rival or put her in trouble, in fact she had five break points throughout the game and could hardly take advantage of one in the second set.
The Pole hurt with her best shot, the heavy forehand with which she threw winners from any sector of the court, thus taking a 2-0 lead with a service break and then stretching to 3-0 with her serve.
Podoroska just won her first point at 17 minutes, when she managed to get the European out of her comfort zone and loaded the whole game on her backhand, although at the same time she connected few first aces and, after giving up the service for the second time, she left escape the set 6-2 in 36 minutes.
Swiatek kept the initiative in the second set, always leaning on his right (a shot that was short, with a lot of acceleration), so he broke Rosario again on three occasions (2-0, 4-0 and 5-1) to leave victory at hand, undeterred when he gave up his serve for the only time at 4-1 in favor.
Podoroska did not decipher the enigma posed by the Pole, despite the fact that she tried to vary her blows and looked for better angles to make her uncomfortable (that made her play without a margin and she missed a lot) and so the second set quickly went 6-1 to close a game in which he always ran behind on the scoreboard.
Beyond the defeat, for the “Peque” the 2020 edition of Roland Garros, with a limited audience in the stands and mandatory health protocols to mitigate the effects of the coronavirus, will mark a before and after.
The “Peque” performed at an outstanding level since she managed to enter the main draw after having drawn three qualifying games, against the Polish Magdalena Frech (157), the Romanian Jacqueline Cristian (166) and the Chinese Xinyu Wang (146), and once inside, he knitted together the best of his career with unforgettable victories over the Belgian Greet Minnen (111), the Kazakh Yulia Putintseva (27), the Slovak Anna Schmiedlova (161), the Czech Barbora Krejcikova (114) and finally the Ukrainian Elina Svitolina (5).
Podoroska, classified for the Tokyo Olympics thanks to her gold medal at the Lima 2019 Pan American Games, broke all the odds and went as far as she could, in a Grand Slam that saw the great favorites say goodbye quickly, such as the cases of the Romanian Halep, the Belarusian Viktoria Azarenka, the Spanish Garbiñe Muguruza and the American Serena Williams.
The tennis player trained by Juan Pablo Guzmán and Emiliano Redondi took a historic performance from Paris and led to women’s tennis being taken into account in Argentina, something that had not happened for more than three decades.
His performance, added to that of Diego Schwartzman, semi-finalist in the men’s box, recalled the days of “La Legión” or more recently the successes of Juan Martín Del Potro from Tandil, US Open champion in 2009 and semi-finalist at Roland Garros in 2018.
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