ZIMBABWE’s top female tennis player Cara Black is through to the semi-finals of the 2014 Dongfeng Motor Wuhan Open Women doubles after combining with Caroline Garcia to beat the Italian pair of Roberta Vinci and Sara Errani in a quarterfinal match at Optics Valley International Tennis Center in China yesterday.
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The Zimbo-French combination upset the pre-tournament favourites 6-3 1-6 10-4 to qualify to the last four of the $2 440 070 tournament. The tense match lasted for 1 hour 7 minutes.
Black and Garcia will now meet the pairing of Andrea Hlavackova (Czech Republic) and Shuai Peng from the host nation in the semi-finals today.
The duo won their match in straight sets 7-5 6-4 in an energy sapping time of 1 hour 25 minutes.
To qualify for the quarter-finals, Black and Garcia beat Klaudia Jans-Ignacik and Kristina Mladenovic 5-7 6-4 10-5.
In the first round Black and her partner made an easy work of Alison Riske and Heather Watson, winning the match 6-1 6-4.
If Black manages to go all the way, it will be a second title for her in a space of seven days after her triumph in the Pan Pacific Open where she combined with partner Sania Mirza to victory last weekend.
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The victory saw them qualifying for the BNP Paribas WTA Finals Singapore next month.
It would be Black’s 11th appearance in the competition having qualified for the previous 10 years with three different partners — Elena Likhovtseva, Rennae Stubbs and Liezel Huber.
Sania and Cara would compete in the eight-team doubles competition, joining Errani and Vinci, Ekaterina Makarova and Elena Vesnina, and defending champions Peng Shuai and Hsieh Su-Wei, who qualified earlier.
