DEFENDING champion Francesca Schiavone will face France’s Marion Bartoli tomorrow for a place in the French Open final.
Fifth seed Schiavone hit back from a set and 4-1 down to defeat Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova 1-6 7-5 7-5 while Bartoli ended the hopes of 2009 champion Svetlana Kuznetsova this evening.
The 11th seed recovered from being pegged back twice in the opening set to win the tie-break and then proved the more reliable in the second to triumph 7-6 (7/4) 6-4, provoking a huge roar from the crowd on Court Suzanne Lenglen.
Bartoli’s previous best at Roland Garros was a fourth-round appearance in 2007, the year she went on to reach the Wimbledon final before losing to Venus Williams.
Schiavone said: “The more I play, the better I play. That’s always been the case. I started much too slowly. But by the end I felt much better and I could play better tennis.
“She played really well but maybe she has less experience than me. Today I think I used my 30 years.”
Meanwhile Jamie Murray is two victories away from a second grand slam mixed doubles title after he and Nadia Petrova defeated Ekaterina Makarova and Bruno Soares 5-7 6-3 10-7 in the quarter-finals of the French Open yesterday afternoon.
The Scot and his Russian partner had saved two match points in the previous round and they again needed a champions’ tie-break to come through and set up a semi-final against top seeds Katarina Srebotnik and Nenad Zimonjic.
