Anna Kalinskaya stun Iga Swiatek to enter Dubai final

Qualifier Anna Kalinskaya stunned World No.1 Iga Swiatek in Friday’s semifinals of the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships, 6-4, 6-4, snapping the World No.1’s seven-match winning streak and advancing to her first Hologic WTA Tour-level singles final.

The loss is just Swiatek’s second in her last 26 matches dating back to last September’s WTA 500 event in Tokyo. At World No.40, Kalinskaya, meanwhile, is the sixth-lowest ranked player to ever make the final in Dubai in its two-plus decade history, and is the first qualifier to reach the final at the tournament.

She’ll face World No.26 Jasmine Paolini of Italy in Sunday’s final in an all-unseeded affair — the first all-unseeded final at WTA 1000 level since two former Top 10 players, Caroline Garcia and Petra Kvitova, dueled in the championship match in Cincinnati in 2022. It will be the fourth all-unseeded final in tournament history, all of which have come in the last decade: Venus Williams vs. Alize Cornet (2014), Sara Errani vs. Barbora Strycova (2016) and Jelena Ostapenko vs Veronika Kudermetova (2022).

Kalinskaya’s win over Swiatek lasted 1 hour and 42 minutes, bringing her total time on court in main-draw matches this week to 7 hours and 43 minutes

Kalinskaya is the first qualifier to defeat the World No.1 in more than 1,500 days: when Jennifer Brady beat Ashleigh Barty at the Brisbane International in 2020. The World No.1 won the last 21 such matches.