By the third set, both Dalila Jakupovic and Sabina Sharipova had grown accustomed to long drawn rallies. Only Jakupovic had a weapon her opponent had not been able to read. At 3-3 in the third set, the pair engaged in another slugfest until the Slovenian cushioned a backhand to kill the point with a drop shot.\u201cI too used to be a powerful baseliner, but I liked playing drop shots,\u201d she says. \u201cBecause of that I learned how to vary my game and adapt.\u201d<\/p>\n
The perfectly measured drop shot gave her three break points. Sharipova double-faulted to concede the break, and could not recover as Jakupovic would go on to win 3-6, 6-3, 6-3 to enter her first ever WTA tour event singles final at the Mumbai Open 125K Series.<\/p>\n
Jakupovic had played a marathon 101-minute semi-final at the CCI Courts, but her work for the day wasn\u2019t quite done. She still had to sit in the \u2018coach\u2019s\u2019 chair for Amandine Hesse in the second semi-final.<\/p>\n
\u201cFriends on tour are hard to come by at this level because of the competition,\u201d says the world no 265. \u201cShe\u2019s one of my best friends and she\u2019s come here after a long injury. Her coach had to stay at home, so I said if she needs me, I\u2019m here for here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jakupovic understands the value of every ounce of support a player can get, especially since she hails from a country which doesn\u2019t have a strong sporting culture. \u201cEven football, which is famous everywhere, isn\u2019t too big in Slovenia. All footballers have side jobs to sustain themselves,\u201d she explains.<\/p>\n
Her father Senad, once a semi-professional himself and now her coach and fitness trainer, watched from the stands as Jakupovic set up a meeting with no 1 seed and world no 96 Aryna Sabalenka \u2013 a powerful teenager who recently led Belarus to a finalist finish at the Fed Cup. The 19-year-old took just over an hour to dismantle Hesse to a 6-2, 6-3 win, with Jakupovic watching from the sidelines.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By the third set, both Dalila Jakupovic and Sabina Sharipova had grown accustomed to long drawn rallies. Only Jakupovic had a weapon her opponent had not been able to read. At 3-3 in the third set, the pair engaged in another slugfest until the Slovenian cushioned a backhand to kill the point with a drop […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11299,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11298"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11298\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11300,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11298\/revisions\/11300"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}