As the Dubai Tennis Championships moves along, the second semi-final will be the Jasmine Paolini vs Sorana Cirstea one. While in the second semi-final, World No.1 Iga Swiatek takes to the court against Anna Kalinskaya. Paolini eyes to become the second Italian in two months to win a major tennis championship.
Cirstea, on the other hand, beat Donna Vekic, proving The SportsRush prediction correct, in the third round. She followed it with a stunning win over Marketa Vondrousova and is now eyeing the trophy.
The Jasmine Paolini vs Sorana Cirstea match will take place on the outdoor hard courts of the Dubai Tennis Center. The match will begin not before 5:00 pm local time (8 AM ET) on Friday.
Jasmine Paolini has been phenomenal. She got a walkover in her match against world no. 4 Elena Rybakina, but before that, she looked invincible. Paolini defeated Maria Sakkari 6-4, 6-2, and Leylah Fernandez 6-3, 6-4, in her third and second round matches respectively. Her terrific performance here is coming on the back of her fourth-round finish in the 2024 Australian Open, her best Grand Slam performance to date. She also ranks 26, a huge improvement in her career for the first time.
Therefore, overall, Jasmine Paolini looks in the best form of her life currently.
Sorana Cirstea beat Vondrousova 2-6, 7-6 (7-1), 6-2 in the quarter-final. She beat Sofia Kenin, Veronika Kudermetova and Donna Vekic in the first, second and third rounds respectively. Cirstea, a 33-year-old player from Romania, has been playing the sport for more than 16 years now. Including the Dubai Tennis Championships 2024, she reached two WTA 1000 semi-finals in two years now.
The first was the 2023 Miami Open, where she defeated World No.2 Aryna Sabalenka, Marketa Vondrousova, and Karolina Muchova in the process. She currently ranks 22nd in the world and will be hot in form in this semi-final.
Although both Sorana Cirstea and Jasmine Paolini are ranked close to each other, The SportsRush predicts Cirstea to win the Sorana Cirstea vs Jasmine Paolini battle.
Jasmine Paolini vs Sorana Cirstea match details
The Jasmine Paolini vs Sorana Cirstea contest has happened twice in their careers before. They first met at the 2021 Zavarovalnica Sava Portoroz in Portoroz, Slovenia. Paolini won that match 6-4, 4-6, 6-1. The next time they met was at the 2023 French Open, where Paolini won again by 7-5, 2-6, 6-2. Therefore, Jasmine Paolini has a 2-0 lead over Sorana Cirstea in their head-to-head.
As per the Tennis Tonic website, the odds for Sorana Cirstea are 1.7, and the odds for Jasmine Paolini are 2.16. The match will stream live online on Tennis TV. The US audience can catch it live on Tennis Channel and the UK viewers can watch it on Sky Sports. The temperatures in Dubai around 5 pm will be 26 degrees Celsius with wind speed of 19 km/h and humidity of 61%. It should be a thrilling match.
