Latvian Jelena Ostapenko blazed a trail into the French Open final with a 7-6(4) 3-6 6-3 victory over Swiss Timea Bacsinszky in a battle of the birthday girls on Thursday.
On the day she turned 20 the free-swinging world number 47 launched a fusillade of winners to become the first unseeded player to reach the womenโs singles final at Roland Garros since Mima Jausovec lost to Chris Evert in 1983.
A match of wildly fluctuating fortunes, with barely a service hold in sight, appeared to be slipping away from Ostapenko when she lost four games in a row to lose the second set against Bacsinszky, who was hoping to celebrate her 28th birthday by going one better than her semi-final run in 2015.
But Ostapenko played fearlessly in the decider and pounded away a 50th clean winner to become the first Latvian player to reach a grand slam final.
