Vesnina ousts Venus to reach semi-finals at Indian Wells

INDIAN WELLS, California: Elena Vesnina denied Venus Williams another comeback win, while Kristina Mladenovic roared back from a set and a break down to beat Caroline Wozniacki on Thursday to reach the semi-finals of the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells.

Williams, who this week survived match points against Jelena Jankovic and was down a break in the third against Peng Shuai, fought off three match points in the eighth game and had six chances to bring it back on serve in the next before the 14th-seeded Russian finally held to finish a gutsy 6-2 4-6 6-3 win.

The 30-year-old Vesnina, a Wimbledon semi-finalist last year, ripped a forehand putaway off a backhand from 12th seed Williams that clipped the netcord to end the two hour 11 minute battle in the California desert.

“At the end of the match, I don’t know how I won that game from 0-40,” Vesnina, who had ousted second seed Angelique Kerber to reach the quarters, said in an on-court interview.

“In the first set she was a little bit slow, missed some easy balls. But then in the second set, Venus was back and I was in trouble.”

Mladenovic, the 28th seed, continued an impressive run of form beating 13th seed and 2011 winner Wozniacki 3-6 7-6(4) 6-2 to reach her first Premier Mandatory semi-final and guarantee her debut in the Top 20 in next week’s WTA rankings.

The 23-year-old Frenchwoman improved to 16-5 on the season, a run which includes her first career title in St Petersburg, and an appearance in the final earlier this month in Acapulco.

“She’s on fire. So am I,” said Vesnina.

“One of us can be in the final. We will see tomorrow.”

Mladenovic wasted a slew of opportunities, squandering nine break points as she fell behind 1-5 in the opening set.

“I was very frustrated with the beginning of the match. I was hitting a lot of unforced errors,” she said.

Mladenovic recovered from an early break in the second to move ahead 5-3 before ultimately leveling the match 7-4 in the tiebreak.

Painting the lines in the third set, Mladenovic broke twice and served out the two hour 33 minute win.

Meanwhile, three-time Grand Slam champion Stan Wawrinka reached the semi-finals of the tournament for the first time with a hard-fought three-set victory over eighth-seeded Dominic Thiem.

Switzerland’s third-seeded Wawrinka, playing his first tournament in the United States since his US Open victory last year, battled for two-and-a-half hours to get past the rising Austrian star 6-4, 4-6, 7-6 (7/2) and book a meeting with Spain’s Pablo Carreno Busta.

Carreno Busta saved two match points en route to a 6-1, 3-6, 7-6 (7/4) victory over Uruguay’s Pablo Cuevas.

Wawrinka, 31, posted the 450th ATP win of his career and kept alive his bid for a second elite Masters title to go with his 2014 Monte Carlo triumph.

After dropping his serve to open the match, Wawrinka broke Thiem twice to seize the first set, but Thiem grabbed the break he needed in the third game of the second to level the match.

After withstanding two break points in the first game of the third set, Wawrinka broke the Austrian en route to a quick 3-0 lead.

But Thiem, riding high after a victory in Rio de Janeiro this season, wasn’t about to go quietly, winning the next three games.

But Thiem was unable to convert a break chance in the ninth game, and he found himself facing a match point against his own serve in the 12th — saving it with a booming forehand that Wawrinka could do nothing with as he forced a tiebreaker that Wawrinka controlled.

Carreno Busta also battled through a tense third set in which Cuevas was unable to convert match points against the Spaniard’s serve in both the 10th and 12th games as they took the contest to the tiebreaker.

The drama was heightened by Cuevas’s tumble on the first of those match points as he lunged for a backhand — necessitating a mid-game medical timeout for treatment on his scraped right hand after Carreno Busta had polished off the point with an overhead.

Things stayed tight in the tiebreaker, Carreno Busta gaining a match point at 6-4 when Cuevas sent a backhand long, and sealing it with a backhand volley to reach the first Masters semi-final of his career.