Irina-Camelia Begu fell at the final hurdle in her bid to set up a meeting between the top two seeds in the Rio Open final.

The Romanian second seed suffered a 6-3 4-6 6-2 defeat to Anna Karolina Schmiedlova at the WTA International event, missing out on the chance to go up against top seed Sara Errani in Sunday's decider.

It was Begu who made the first breakthrough in the last-four encounter, winning the third game on Schmiedlova's serve to go 2-1 in front.

However, the Slovakian broke straight back to restore parity before moving 5-3 in front, having squandered two earlier opportunities to break again.

After wrapping up the first set, Schmiedlova won the opening game of the second to love on Begu's serve.

It proved to be scrappy set, with Begu eventually outnumbering Schmiedlova by four breaks to three, but the world number 75 fought back to claim a comfortable win in the third.

Errani, meanwhile, beat fifth seed Johanna Larsson 7-5 6-3.

The first set looked to be heading for a tie-break when Errani squandered her early advantage and allowed Larsson to pull it back to 5-5, but a break in the next game put the Italian in control.

Errani fell 3-0 behind at the beginning of the second, but then reeled off six straight games to comfortably book her place in the final.