Belinda Bencic came back from one set down to beat Karolina Muchova 3-6 7-5 7-5 after saving a match point at the Toray Pan Pacific Open in Tokyo.
Bencic returned to the venue where she won her first match on the WTA Tour 2013 at the age of 16, reached the final in 2015 and won the Olympic singles title in 2021.
Bencic avenged her three-set defeat against Muchova in Montreal last August.
Muchova took a 6-3 5-3 lead, but Bencic bounced back by winning four consecutive games including two breaks of serve to close out the second set 7-5.
Bencic earned an early break in the second game to open up a 3-0 lead at the start of the third set. Muchova, who had undergone treatment on her right ankle at the start of the second set, broke back in the fifth game to reduce the gap to 2-3 and held serve in the sixth game at 15 to draw level to 3-3 and earned a second chance to serve for the match at 5-4. Bencic saved a match point and broke back in the 10th game to draw level to 5-5. The Swiss player broke serve on her second match point in the 12th game after 3 hours and 8 minutes in her third match in ten days to last longer than three hours. She won the longest WTA WTA match of the year against Yulia Starodubutseva after 3 hours and 33 minutes last week in the second round in Ningbo before losing to Jasmine Paolini in 3 hours and 22 minutes in the quarter finals.
“It’s my third match in the last four that went over three hours, so I feel like I should try to play a regular match. I’m exhausted now but really happy. to win, I think it was a big fight from both of us. On the final point I was just hoping it was over and I just tried to go for it, tried to be aggressive and tried to take my own luck in the hands”, said Bencic in the post match interview.
Bencic will face 2020 Australian Open champion Sofia Kenin, who beat Ekaterina Alexandrova in three sets. Kenin beat Bencic in both of her previous head-to-head matches on grass in Mallorca in 2019 and on clay in Charlseston last April.
