The Toray Pan Pacific Open title match will be a battle between home star Naomi Osaka and the 2010 Tokyo champion Caroline Wozniacki, who will play her 41st career final.
In the first Saturday’s semifinal, a match-up between two past Tokyo champions, Wozniacki ended Agnieszka Radwanska‘s title defense with a thrilling 4-6 7-5 6-4 victory, a continuation of the Dane’s late season resurgence, which included the US Open semifinals. After losing the first set, Wozniacki came back from 5-3 down in the second set by winning four straight games and in the third set the former world number one also initially had a deficit, going back from 3-1 down by again winning four straight games before closing out the match.
The 18-year-old Osaka straightforwardly lost the first set 6-1 to her semifinal opponent Elina Svitolina on Saturday, but that’s the sole set the Japanese has dropped at the Premier-level event. In the second set, even though Svitolina got 81% first serves in, the Ukrainian converted none of the seven break points she earned, and Osaka forced the third set, in which she confidently recorded breaks in the fifth and seventh games to win 1-6 6-3 6-2.
The Tokyo final will be the first career meeting between Wozniacki and Osaka.
Resurgence, indeed – impressive!