SEOUL: Emma Raducanu surged into the Seoul semi-finals on Friday as she won three matches in a row at a tournament for the first time since her US Open triumph.
The 19-year-old Briton blew away third seed Magda Linette 6-2, 6-2 at the Korea Open and faces fellow former major champion Jelena Ostapenko in the last four.
Raducanu stunned the tennis world when she emerged from qualifying to win the US Open last year, but she has struggled to build on that and her Grand Slam defence ended in the first round last month.
Raducanu, who reached a career-high 10th in the world in July but is now 77th, showed flashes of her Flushing Meadows brilliance of 2021 in demolishing Poland’s Linette in 77 minutes.
Sixth-seeded Raducanu got off to a fast start, quickly winning the first four games and taking the first set 6-2.
She continued to dominate in the second set and her race to the finish line was only temporarily held up when her opponent required a lengthy medical timeout.
The resurgent Raducanu is yet to drop a set in Seoul.
But she faces a tough test in the form of top seed Ostapenko, the 2017 French Open champion from Latvia.
She thrashed 186th-ranked Victoria Jimenez Kasintseva 6-2, 6-1 in their quarter-final.
The other semi-final is between Russia’s Ekaterina Alexandrova and Germany’s Tatjana Maria.
