A day after overtaking the world number 1, the Brazilian Bia Haddad achieved another historic feat this Friday: she beat the Swiss Belinda Bencic by 2 sets to 1, partials of 4/6, 6/3 and 6/3, and qualified for the WTA 1000 Semi-Finals in Toronto, Canada.

It is the first time that a Brazilian has finished in the top four of a tournament in this series, the second most important on the women’s tennis circuit, behind only the Grand Slam tournaments. The day before, she had beaten the Polish Iga Swiatek, world number 1 and winner of four WTA 1000 series tournaments this year.

In search of a place in the final, Bia Haddad will face the winner of the duel between Karolina Pliskova, from the Czech Republic, 14th in the world, and China’s Winwen Zheng, number 51 in the WTA rankings.

The other semi-final will pit Romanian Simona Halep, world number 15, against American Jessica Peula, 7th in the standings. This Friday, Halep beat another American tennis player, Coco Gauff, 11th on the WTA list, by 2 sets to 0, partials 6/4 and 7/6 (7/2), while Pegula beat the Kazakh Yulia Putintseva, 46th in the world, also in two sets, 8/3 and 6/3.

Bia Haddad is recovering from a bad start

In the first set, the Canadian tennis player dominated the actions, got two breaks in the lead and won easily by 6/2.

In the second part, the situation was reversed: the Brazilian got an early break and, serving safely, kept the advantage until she broke the rival’s serve again and closed at 6/3.

The third set was the most balanced: Bencic won the first two games, but Bia Haddad recovered and returned the break, winning three games in a row. The Brazilian sweated to win game seven, after several draws, and rocked to break the rival’s serve again, in game eight, and close the game with an ace and another 6/3 win.