KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — Canada’s Eugenie Bouchard will play for the BMW Malaysian Open tennis title.
The 22-year-old from Montreal dispatched Britain’s Naomi Broady 6-4, 6-3 in Saturday’s semifinals, and will face No.2 seed Elina Svitolina of Ukraine in her second WTA final of the year.
Bouchard had to face the booming serve of Broady, who hit 10 aces during the match.
"My game is always pretty aggressive, but I couldn’t exactly attack her first serve," Bouchard said. "She’s an amazing server and was serving pretty fast, she’s also very accurate with her serve. I was just trying to get the first serve back in the court."
Bouchard broke Broady’s serve to start the match, and created 13 break opportunities — seven in the first set alone.
Bouchard booked her spot in the final without dropping a set all tournament.
"I got here early for the tournament and I was working really hard in practice just trying to improve different areas of my game," she said. "I feel like I’ve improved already since last week and for me that’s just my goal right now — to improve every single week."
Bouchard and Svitolina have faced each other three times, with Svitolina winning all three. Svitolina reached the final with a 6-3, 6-3 victory over Chinese qualifier Zhu Lin.