Latvian Jelena Ostapenko blazed a trail into the French Open final with a 7-6 (4) 3-6 6-3 victory over Swiss Timea Bacsinszky in a battle of the birthday girls on Thursday. On the day she turned 20 the
free-swinging world number 47 launched a fusillade of winners to become
the first unseeded player to reach the women’s singles final at Roland
Garros since Mima Jausovec lost to Chris Evert in 1983. A match of wildly fluctuating
fortunes, with barely a service hold in sight, appeared to be slipping
away from Ostapenko when she lost four games in a row to lose the second
set against Bacsinszky, who was hoping to celebrate her 28th birthday
by going one better than her semi-final run in 2015. But Ostapenko played fearlessly in
the decider and pounded away a 50th clean winner to become the first
Latvian player to reach a Grand Slam final. The Irish Times
