Romanian tennis player Irina Begu qualified on Thursday for the semifinals of the WTA tournament in Moscow, featuring prizes worth 790,208 dollars, after defeating Belarusian Vera Lapko, 6-3, 4-6, 7-5. Irina Begu, Begu (aged 27, WTA's 56th) had a hard time prevailing on her underdog adversary, Vera Lapko, aged 19, WTA's 167th, landed from qualifications.
Begu led the second set 4-2 which she later on lost 4-6 and saved a match point at 5-6 in the deciding set, in which she took the lead with 3-0. The match lasted two hours and 25 minutes, of which the last set more than an hour. Irina Begu, finalist in Moscow in 2014, secured a 42,080-US-dollar cheque and 185 WTA points and will face off in the penultimate act, Russian Daria Kasatkina, who defeated Aleksandra Sasnovici (Belarus), 6-4, 6-3.
Kasatkina (aged 20, WTA's 28th) scored 4-1 in the direct matches against the Romanian, whom she defeated three times this year, the last time in Charleston, 6-4, 6-1.