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Azarenka and Sharapova progress

Top two seeds Victoria Azarenka and Maria Sharapova will meet in the final of the Porsche Grand Prix in Stuttgart on Sunday.

After all four of the world's top ranked players made it through to the semis of a WTA event for the first time since 2009, it was the leading duo who progressed through as Azarenka knocked out Agnieszka Radwanska and Sharapova downed Petra Kvitova.

World number one Azarenka had an epic quarter-final against Mona Barthel that lasted almost three hours, but the Belarusian needed less than half that to defeat in-form Pole Radwanska 6-1 6-3 to claim a tour-high 29th win in 30 matches this year.

Radwanska's loss was only her fifth in 33 matches in 2012, with all five of those defeats coming at the hands of Azarenka.

Russian Sharapova also needed three hours to win her quarter-final against Sam Stosur and the world number two was made to work hard again by Petra Kvitova before beating the Czech third seed 6-4 7-6 (7/3).