The 2019 Tashkent Open semi-finals will be in action on Friday, September 27 and you can get the Sorana Cirstea v Katarina Zavatska & Kristyna Pliskova v Alison van Uytvanck tips and predictions with their previews below.
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Sorana Cirstea v Katarina Zavatska Predictions & Preview
This is the first time that Sorana Cirstea and Katarina Zavatska will face off at the highest level. The 29-year-old Cirstea is 10 years the senior of Zavatska and she was once ranked 21st in the world. She has obviously fallen down the pecking order and even earlier this year went through a horrible phase in which losses were piling on thick and fast.
Every now and then, however, Cirstea has surprised those around with a strong performance – like the way she did at Nurnberg where she made the semi-final. But that was followed by a run of five tournaments in which she didn’t win more than one match.
A third round at US Open obviously helped, and a semi-final here at Tashkent, a second of the year, has pushed Cirstea to 81st on the live WTA rankings.
At the other end of the scale is Zavatska, who is on a roll of her own. Ranked 142nd in the world at the start of this week, Zavatska will break into at least the top 120s even if she loses this match – her previous best in the ranking was 127th.
Such has been Zavatska’s form in this tournament, she has beaten Jelena Ostapenko, Tereza Martincova and Anna Kalinskaya and in straight sets apiece. Which tells us this could be a tough match between the experience of Cirstea and the youth of Zavatska, but we think the latter could edge this contest.
Tip: Kuzmova to win: 8/11 with Unibet
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Kristyna Pliskova v Alison van Uytvanck Preview
In what would be the second match of their career, world number 61 Alison van Uytvanck and 80th-ranked Kristyna Pliskova will go head to head for a place in the final of the Tashkent Open. Their only previous meeting came so long ago, it would be a wonder if the players themselves remember – in 2011 on the ITF circuit where Pliskova won in straight sets.
This is only the second WTA semi-final that Pliskova has reached this season, having earlier done that in Lugano on clay. There, she had beaten Svetlana Kuznetsova on her way to getting to the last-four stage, here her wins have come over Jasmine Paolini, Katarzyna Kawa and Viktoria Kuzmova. What would please her is the 6-3, 6-4 banishing of the top seeded Kuzmova in her previous match.
It’s been that much better for van Uytvanck though. Having won a title on indoor circuit earlier this year, she also managed to reach the final at Karlsruhe later before making her way to the quarter-finals in Hiroshima two weeks ago. This is a step further with a semi-final here.
Her form has been stupendous too. The wins have all been straight-set ones, and van Uytvanck has lost just 12 games in total this tournament. She starts as our favourite to win this one.
Tip: van Uytvanck to win: 8/11 with 888Sport