Olivia Nicholls and Tereza Mihalikova fought their way into the women's doubles final at the HSBC Championships 2026 after saving three match points in a 4-6, 7-5, 12-10 semifinal win at Queen's Club in London. The match lasted one hour and 24 minutes and ended with Nicholls and Mihalikova still standing on grass after a finish that swung again and again before the last point.

The result matters because Nicholls had already been through one high-level doubles match earlier the same day, when she and Mihalikova beat Aleksandra Krunić and Anna Danilina 6-4, 6-4. Danilina and Krunić were the top seeds in the official WTA draw, so the pair arrived at the semifinal with a first win that already carried weight and a second match that asked for more than endurance.

That second match was the kind that can turn on one return, one volley, or one missed chance. Nicholls and Mihalikova lost the opening set, then found a way back in the second before the contest reached a deciding match tie-break, where they were pushed to the edge by three match points. In practical terms, that means the other side had three separate chances to close it out with a single point, and Nicholls and Mihalikova saved every one of them before edging the tie-break 12-10.

The semifinal was part of the grass-court doubles draw at London's Queen's Club, and it left Nicholls and Mihalikova one step from the title match. What comes next is the final itself, against opponents not named in the available result, but the path there is already clear: after a day that began with a straight-sets win and ended with a comeback that refused to die, Nicholls has reached the point where a final at a major London event is no longer a possibility but the next stop.