World No 3 and second seed Karolina Pliskova reached her first-ever semi-final at the Miami Open on Tuesday. Pliskova defeated fellow Czech, and 26th seed, Mirjana Lucic-Baroni in straight sets 6-3, 6-4 in 72 minutes.

Lucic-Baroni was done in by her poor serving throughout the match. The 34-year-old committed 10 double faults and though she converted three of the four break points on Pliskova’s serve, her erratic serving took away the momentum away from her.

“She had some chances in the second one, I still, you know, managed somehow to always puts the service back and return it well so she was still under the pressure. So, that was also the key of the match, the serve,” Pliskova said post-match.

The 25-year-old will take on Caroline Wozniacki for a place in the final, in the second half of the draw, after the Dane defeated Lucie Safarova in their quarter-final. The 12th seeded Dane came through in straight sets as well, winning 6-4, 6-3 in an hour and 50 minutes.

Wozniacki, a former semi-finalist here in Miami, was only broken once in the match, in the opening set. She went on to recover the break back, before breaking Safarova for the second time to gain a 6-4 lead in the match. The Czech player was unable to get a read on Wozniacki’s game in the second set and while she was broken only once in the set, Wozniacki retained the lead to see her through to the semi-final.

Seeds progress through in doubles

In the women’s doubles, third seeds Sania Mirza and Barbora Strycova had no problems in dispatching Vania King and Yaroslava Shvedova to take their place in the semi-finals.

The fourth seeded Czech-Chinese team of Andrea Hlavackova and Shuai Peng defeated the unseeded Russian-French duo of Svetlana Kuznetsova and Kristina Mladenovic in their quarter-final clash. Hlavackova and Peng won in straight sets, 6-1, 6-4 in 61 minutes.

The Canadian-Chinese partnership of Gabriela Dabrowski and Yifan Xu reached the quarter-finals with a 6-1, 7-5 win over the Spanish-Chinese team of Lara Arruabarrena and Chen Liang. Dabrowski and Xu will now face the second seeds Elena Vesnina and Ekaterina Makarova.