French Open 2017: Timea Bacsinszky survives rain delays to beat Kristina Mladenovic in straight sets

ByTom Bennett

Updated 06/06/2017 at 20:54 GMT

Switzerland’s Timea Bacsinszky beat home hero Kristina Mladenovic 6-4 6-4 in a French Open quarterfinal that featured numerous rain delays on a damp day at Roland Garros.

Bacsinszky started the better of the two players after the start of the match was delayed by heavy rain. And the 27-year-old deservedly took the first set as her opponent struggled to cope with the occasion.

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World No 14 Mladenovic briefly threatened a comeback in the second set, racing into a 3-1 lead, but Bacsinszky held her nerve in the stop-start encounter to win four straight games before serving out for a spot in the semis.

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The Swiss reached the French Open semi-finals for the second time, with a rain-interrupted 6-4 6-4 victory against local favourite Kristina Mladenovic, where she will face Latvia's Jelena Ostapenko.

Despite the tough conditions and the partisan crowd, the 30th seed managed to control her emotions to produce her best tennis, after having a nightmare in her sleep and waking up nervous.

"I really get nervous. Last night I went to bed more or less at 11:00. I woke up at 4:00," she told a news conference.

Could not sleep for an hour. Went back to sleep. Woke up earlier than my alarm. My heart was beating. Like, it was a rush.

That came at the end of an agitated night for Bacsinszky, who explained her nightmare.

"I remember that I had, like, three towels that I wanted to give to my siblings because I have three, but I forgot them in the closet," she said.

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"So it was a big drama, so I could not get into the plane without giving the towels of the French Open, and I woke up and I was sweating. It was terrible for me.

"So probably if I would not be playing a quarter-final of a grand slam, I would probably not have these kind of nightmare issues.

The day started with little prospect of play at Roland Garros, with rain teeming across the Paris clay courts and giving the groundstaff plenty of work to do.

And when the match did eventually get underway the windy conditions disrupted Mladenovic's flow in-front of a vocal home crowd.

Bacsinszky kept her composure in the swirling winds and sealed the first set with an ace.

But then the rains came in again, disrupting both players, delaying the men's quarterfinals and forcing the match into two subsequent restarts before Bacsinszky finally claimed victory.

"Today I was very, very far from my best tennis and it was still a close two sets, I'd be silly not to be positive about that," said Mladenovic, who believed her opponent's game was more suited to the tough conditions.

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