Saturday was a super busy day in Seoul, with all the quarterfinals action rescheduled from Friday, followed by two semifinals matches which emerged the final pairing between two top seeds - Iga Swiatek and Ekaterina Alexandrova. All of the matches played on Saturday ended up in straight sets, while those from the top half of the draw were one-sided beatdowns.
Swiatek's extraordinary day of dominance
Iga Swiatek displayed an extraordinary run of form today, crushing both her opponents, spending just about 2 hours on the court in two matches played. The Pole started her day in extraordinary fashion, winning 6-0 in the first set of the quarterfinals hit clash against Barbora Krejcikova. The second part was quite a shaky one with two service games lost by the top seed, however another Krejcikova comeback following her epic turnover of the previous match against Emma Raducanu never seemed like being on the cards. 6-0 6-3 was the final score with a huge discrepancy of serving performance. Swiatek scored 81% of first serve points and 63% of second serve, while Krejcikova recorded just 38% and 30% respectively - far from enough to be competitive on that day.
The semifinal of the top half got emerged between Swiatek and Maya Joint. The Australian performed quite an upset over world number 12 Clara Tauson. Not just the outcome, but the extent of it was surprising, as Joint won the opening set 6-0. Tauson regrouped since the start of the second set, but the Australian came back to her top level, winning 5 games since being down 1-3 to win it all by 6-0 6-3. The 19-year-old did not manage to make another upset, getting beaten by Swiatek in just a few minutes more than an hour with another one-sided score that day - 6-0, 6-2. Despite the crushing scoreline, Joint was able to create pressure points on Swiatek's serve but won just 6 of 19 produced and especially won 5 out of 17 on her own serve, easily cracking under pressure.
Alexandrova powers through bottom half
Ekaterina Alexandrova emerged into the final after defeating Ella Seidel by 6-2 6-3 and Katerina Siniakova by 6-4 6-2. The match against the German started with a series of breaks on both sides, however Alexandrova performed an efficient performance, getting a routine win despite facing 29 pressure points on serve. Seidel won none of her service games in the opening set and just 2 out of 8 in the whole match. The tie against Siniakova who made it into her first WTA 500 semifinal this year, was much more under control. Interestingly, Alexandrova won as much as 66% of second serve points despite scoring just half of the points won on first serve.
Final preview
Swiatek is a favorite to win her second title on hard courts this year and first WTA 500 trophy since 2.5 years. She leads the head-to-head against the Russian by 5-2 including the one-sided victory in the US Open three weeks ago. Swiatek has executed her game plan perfectly, ending the impressive run of Alexandrova who dominated her first three opponents. The second seed is more than solid this year, excelling on hard courts with 8 wins in the last 10 matches. It's Alexandrova's second consecutive WTA 500 final run after losing to Diana Shnaider in Monterrey's title match last month.
