It would be hard to imagine a more striking contrast of styles than a clash between Agnieszka Radwanska and Petra Kvitova. The sites of their biggest titles illustrate the difference between them. While Kvitova has triumphed twice on the fast grass courts of Wimbledon, Radwanska's greatest achievement came last fall at the year-end championships in Singapore, one of the slowest surfaces on the WTA Tour. Their games can be summed up, respectively, as devastatingly simple and deceptively complex. The Czech aims to bludgeon opponents with explosive first-strike combinations, whereas the Pole seeks to tie them in knots with a combination of deft touch, exhaustive court coverage, and intelligent, generally high-percentage shot selection.

As top-eight seeds, both women were projected to reach the quarterfinals at Indian Wells, but each could count herself fortunate to have met those expectations. Radwanska saved a match point and rallied from 2-5 down in her opening match against Dominika Cibulkova, while Kvitova came within two points of defeat in her opener and was extended to three sets in each of her three previous matches. As Radwanska pointed out, however, the days between matches at a two-week event allow players to regroup more effectively than in the daily routine of a one-week tournament.

Radwanska also suggested after her previous match that the Indian Wells hard courts were a neutral surface between the two, but their history at this event tells a different story. Kvitova never had advanced past the quarterfinals in the desert and had reached this stage for only the second time. On the other hand, Radwanska contested her sixth quarterfinal at this tournament and knew the feeling of reaching the final here, having finished runner-up to Flavia Pennetta in 2014. Historically, some of her best tennis has come in North America, most of Kvitova's best in Europe.

Unlikely to outmaneuver Radwanska, Kvitova would look to take control of points with her serve and return. In the first few games of the match, she showed her resolve to play on her terms by shortening the points whenever possible. However, the massive first strikes on which Kvitova relies did not strike their targets with accuracy. She tossed a double fault and three loose forehands into a service game, leading to an early break.

Since Kvitova lacks a reserve strategy when her Plan A misfires, she continued to take high risks while aiming for the outside of the lines. She earned four immediate chances to break back in Radwanska’s next service game, but unforced errors allowed all of them to slip away. When the former Wimbledon champion yielded consecutive double faults to drop serve again, the writing was essentially on the wall for the first set. Radwanska carefully inflicted death by paper cut on the Czech, patiently working her out of position in point after point.

With plenty of mileage on her tires this tournament, Kvitova faced the prospect of coming from behind yet again. She had endured a lengthy battle with Nicole Gibbs under the desert sun on the previous day, so the odds were not in her favor. However, she battled gamely to escape early trouble on her serve and make her first inroads on Radwanska’s service games. After three straight breaks early in the set, Kvitova found her range on serve and groundstrokes simultaneously in her most impressive hold of the match.

This secured a 5-2 lead for the Czech and put her in position to level the match two games later. At that stage, though, with Kvitova two points from a third set, an unlucky net cord and a spectacular lob by Radwanska denied her. Ever a fan favorite, the Pole received an enthusiastic ovation for this burst of improvisational magic, which illustrated why she is called the “ninja” by many around the game.

Kvitova would fight into a tiebreak, but this sequence was never seriously in doubt. An inauspicious double fault from her racket set the tone for the first several points, which ended with unforced errors from the Czech. When Kvitova did have a chance to jump back into the tiebreak, she bounced an open look at a drop shot off the top of the net and watched the carom tug it slightly wide. Amusingly, the net failed to return the favor when Radwanska’s first shot on the next point glanced off the tape and trickled across. Kvitova saved the first of the four match points that Radwanska earned with that stroke of luck, but solid play from the world No. 3 snuffed out her hopes on the second to clinch a 6-2 7-6(3) victory.

Seeking her second Indian Wells final in three years, Radwanska next will face either Serena Williams or Simona Halep on Friday night. While she has won one total set in nine matches against Serena, she has played Halep roughly evenly across their nine meetings (holding a 5-4 advantage) and thus surely would prefer to face the tournament’s defending champion. No matter how the rest of her tournament unfolds, however, a semifinal appearance bolstered by her first win over Kvitova outside the year-end championships continued one of the strongest stretches of Radwanska’s career. She has fallen short of the final four at just one of nine tournaments since the US Open, thrusting her struggles of early 2015 well into the rear-view mirror.

For her part, Kvitova managed to overcome a shaky start to the tournament and equal her best performance here. That also is an encouraging sign for a woman who had started her 2016 campaign with a deflating 2-6 record. The tour is not far from returning to the European events where she thrives, so any positive momentum from Indian Wells and Miami might position Kvitova for another strong spring.