Kontaveit Crushes Muguruza In Moscow; Halep, Sabalenka Fall

It was a tough day for the Top 2 seeds in the women’s event in Moscow.

Top seed Garbine Muguruza was crushed by the red-hot Anett Kontaveit in stunning fashion 6-1, 6-1. Kontaveit cracked 22 winners with six aces. The “rolling Estonian” has now won 19 of her last 21 matches, all with new coach Dmitry Tursunov.

Tomorrow in the semifinals she’ll meet Olympic silver medalist Marketa Vondrousova who eliminated the Russian No. 1 Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova 6-4, 6-2. In this battle of French runner-ups, it was Pavlyuchenkova with 32 unforced errors in the match.

No. 2 seed Aryna Sabalenka’s return from COVID was stymied by the last Russian, Ekaterina Alexandrova 6-3, 6-4. Alexandrova is now 2-2 against the Belarussian who hasn’t made a final since her Madrid title in May.

Former No. 1 Simona Halep also fell going down to the higher seed Maria Sakkari 6-4, 6-4. Halep falls to 0-3 and 0-6 in sets against Top 10 players this year, and she has just one semifinal on the season to her name.