Top seed Ons Jabeur will face Olympic champion Belinda Bencic in the Berlin Open final after the Tunisian saw off American teenager Coco Gauff in straight sets on Saturday.
After grinding out a win when the first set went to a tie breaker, Jabeur kept Gauff under pressure, breaking the teenager three times before converting her second match point.
It brought to an end the 18-year-old's best run yet in a grass-court tournament. “You have to be this good to beat Coco, you know. She's a great player,” Jabeur said after the 7-6, 6-2 win.
Jabuer also insisted she had “no expectations” of her first grass tournament of the season while paying tribute to the Tunisian fans. “Everywhere I go they're always here, they're chanting all the time, it's amazing,” she added.
Jabeur will play her fourth final in a season where she has reached a career-high ranking of fourth in the world and became the first African and first Arab player to win a WTA 1000 event at last month's Madrid Open.
The tournament in Germany is her first since a surprise first-round loss at the French Open to Poland's Magda Linette.
Bencic needed to play more than three hours in the heat to beat second-seeded Maria Sakkari 6-7, 6-4, 6-4 in their semi-final.
Bencic had set point in the first-set tiebreaker before her Greek opponent won the next three points to take the set.
The second set and decider were also closely contested, with Sakkari saving four set points in the second and two match points in the third before Bencic broke through.
The Swiss player has a chance to win the Berlin title after losing last year's final to Liudmila Samsonova.
“I thought that was an incredible match,” Bencic said. “We both kind of pushed really hard, we both didn’t give each other anything.”
