Samantha Stosur's French Open dream has been crushed by Spanish fourth seed Garbine Muguruza, who has swept aside the last remaining Australian at Roland Garros in 76 minutes.
Stosur, bidding to reach her second final at Roland Garros, was no match for the world No.4, going down 6-2 6-4 on Friday as she struggled to produce the type of form which had carried her to wins over the past two beaten finalists.
From the outset, she was outmatched, with Muguruza breaking the 32-year-old twice as she raced to a 4-0 first-set lead in a mere 18 minutes.
Stosur was able to settle but rarely threatened in dropping the first set in 34 minutes, with Muguruza playing outstanding tennis, hitting 10 winners in each set.
The Spaniard will play world No.1 Serena Williams in Saturday's final, with the American scoring a hard-fought 7-6 6-4 victory over Dutch surprise packet Kiki Bertens.
In 50 previous grand slam matches in which Stosur had dropped the first set, she'd only managed to recover to win six, and that horror record looked set to haunt her following a similarly rough start to the second set.
After being broken in the opening game, Stosur fought back to secure her first break of the match and level the set at 2-2 - but immediately gave it back to Muguruza, who quickly consolidated for a 4-2 lead.
Stosur's second serve, which had proved so dependable on her march to the last four, let her down terribly as she on three occasions double-faulted on break point to gift her opponent the advantage.
Most crucially, she did so in the seventh game of the second set to go down 5-2 - but, with Muguruza serving for the match, Stosur broke to love to stay alive.
Muguruza recovered in her next service game, sending down a pair of aces before Stosur netted a forehand to complete the straight-sets defeat.
Herself a powerful hitter, Stosur had no answers for Muguruza's power game - making 22 forced errors, as well as 20 unforced errors, primarily as a result of the Spaniard's devastating groundstrokes.
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