Belinda Bencic reaches Abu Dhabi final, ties Aryna Sabalenka for most WTA wins this year

Belinda Bencic continued her hot start to the 2023 season by cooling off Beatriz Haddad Maia’s Top 10 winning streak, defeating the Brazilian in the semifinals of Abu Dhabi today, 6-2, 6-3.

Haddad Maia had won her last six matches in a row against Top 10 players, but the No. 9-ranked Bencic had other ideas.

“It’s been a great start of the season. I’m happy the work we’re putting in on the practice court is showing on the court already,” Bencic said in her on-court interview. “I didn’t expect it to go so fast, but that doesn’t mean we have to slow down.”

Bencic is now 11-2 on the season. This is her second final of the year, after winning in Adelaide the week before the Australian Open. Her only two losses have come to Iga Swiatek at the United Cup and Aryna Sabalenka in the fourth round in Melbourne.

She’s now tied with Sabalenka for most wins on the year, too (the Belarusian, who went on to win the Australian Open, is 11-0).

And having gone 4-0 in Billie Jean King Cup play at the end of 2022, Bencic has now won 15 of her last 17 matches on the tour.

Awaiting Bencic in the final will be Liudmila Samsonova, who battled past China’s Zheng Qinwen in the second semifinal of the day, 6-4, 1-6, 6-4, after two hours and 19 minutes.

Samsonova is now through to the fifth WTA final of her career, and she’s won all four of her previous ones, capturing two WTA 500 titles at Berlin in 2021 and Tokyo in 2022, as well as as a pair of WTA 250s in Wahsington D.C. and Cleveland, both last year.

The No. 19-ranked Russian is 3-0 in her head-to-head against Bencic, beating the Olympic champion three times in 2021—once on grass in the Berlin final, 1-6, 6-1, 6-3, and then twice at the end of the year on indoor hard courts, in the Luxembourg quarterfinals (6-1, 6-4) and at Billie Jean King Cup (3-6, 6-3, 6-4).