Elina Svitolina is back in a WTA semifinal after three months, and she had to claw her way there. At the National Bank Open, she beat Ekaterina Alexandrova 3-6, 6-0, 6-3 in 1 hour and 34 minutes to book a place in the last four.
The result mattered because it ended a stretch that had gone on since May, when Svitolina last reached a semifinal in Rome. It also sends her into a meeting with Iga Swiatek, who has already beaten Marta Kostyuk in the round of 16 and now stands between Svitolina and a place in the final.
For much of the first set, Svitolina looked as if she might be dragged into a match she could not control. She made three double faults, landed only 58% of her first serves and dropped the opening set 3-6, while Alexandrova converted three break points of her own. That made the second set even more striking: Svitolina reset quickly, lost no games in a 6-0 run and then finished the job 6-3 in the third.
What turned the match was not just the scoreline but the way Svitolina worked the important points. She converted six of eight break points, a sharp return after a shaky start that could easily have put her out. Alexandrova was described as a neutral Russian tennis player, which is the standard framework in the sport for competitors from that country, but Svitolina still had to solve the match on court rather than rely on the label around her opponent.
This is also Svitolina’s seventh WTA semifinal of 2026, a number that matters because it shows the win was more than a single recovery effort. She has been back among the season’s steady performers, and the victory in Toronto adds another deep run at a point in the calendar when players are trying to turn form into something bigger. The next test comes quickly: Swiatek is waiting, and Svitolina’s comeback from a poor first set now has to survive a much harder one.
