Fourth seed made her way to her first Australian Open semi-final with a one-sided win over sixth seed on Wednesday. The Japanese dropped just five games in the course of the 72-minute match, as she won 6-4, 6-1.
Both players were more or less well-matched in terms of points won off their first serves. But it was the margin of points won off their second serves that made the difference in the match. The Ukrainian won merely 27% points off her second serves while Osaka won nearly twice as much, 52%.
Svitolina was not without her chances in the match and she, too, broke her opponent twice in the match, but Osaka was simply better. Osaka hit almost thrice as many winners as Svitolina 31 to 11 and finished the match with 60 points to Svitolinas 16.
This was the 58th consecutive match in which she had won the match after winning the first set, with her loss in this regard going back to 2016, at the Tianjin Open quarter-final to Svetlana Kuznetsova. This was also Osakas 12 straight match win at a Major, going back to the 2018 US Open in which she won the title, beating Serena Williams in the final.
The 21-year-old now awaits the winner between Williams and Karolina Pliskova. She has a 2-0 win-to-loss record against the 23-time Grand Slam champion, with both wins coming in 2018. The Czech player, however, leads their head-to-head by the slightest of margins, 3-2.
Photo Credit: Ben Solomon (Tennis Australia)
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