The beautiful course of Leylah Annie Fernandez in doubles is over. The Quebecer and her teammate Alizé Cornet folded the backbone in two sets of 7-5 and 6-1 against the Chinese Yi-Fan Xu and Zhaoxuan Yang in the semi-finals of the Indian Wells tournament on Thursday.
With two breaks on each side, Fernandez and Cornet could tie the game when they served at 6-5 to force the tiebreaker. However, they failed and gave the first set to their opponents.
The second engagement was then quickly concluded in 27 minutes, so that the Chinese will advance to the final.
Gabriela Dabrowski packs up
In the other semi-final, Canada’s Gabriela Dabrowski and her Mexican partner Giuliana Olmos struggled, but ultimately lost in three sets 7-6(6), 3-6, 10-5 to Japan’s Ena Shibahara and American Asia Muhammad.
After a semi-final in their second collaboration, at the 2021 Miami tournament, Dabrowski and Olmos had not reached this stage together since. They had played a lot of tennis in Indian Wells, however, with their last two matches ending in three sets.
The fifth-seeded team had one more break of serve than their seventh-seeded opponents, but it was the super break in the third set that crowned the winners after 1:48.
Shibahara and Muhammad now have a date with Xu and Yang.