Russian fifth seed Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova has survived a spirited fightback from crowd favourite Lucie Safarova to advance to the Brisbane International semifinals for the first time.
The world’s former top-ranked junior and two-time girls’ singles champion at the Australian Open was the more consistent for the first set and a half, jumping to a 6-2 5-3 lead with controlled baseline aggression.
Serving for the match, the 20 year old opened nervously with a double fault. Safarova sensed the opportunity and broke to bring the match back on serve.
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Pavlyuchenkova broke for 6-5 but again failed to close it out on serve with Safarova going on to force a tiebreak and taking it 7-4.
The unseeded Czech maintained momentum early in the third set, breaking early before Pavlyuchenkova steadied to break back and hold after a lengthy struggle on serve.
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Safarova saved a match point on serve at 2-5 down and another when the Russian was serving for the match for the third time.
But there would be no denying Pavlyuchenkova this time around.
She closed the match out with her 11th ace after 2 hours and 45 minutes to set up a semifinal clash with another left-handed Czech, Petra Kvitova, in the semifinals.
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