Rome: Ukrainian Elina Svitolina played some scintillating tennis in the third set to defeat Romanian and World No. 5 Simona Halep in the final of the WTA Italian Open tennis tournament here Sunday. Svitolina won 4-6, 5-7, 6-1 to clinch her fourth title of the season and end Halep’s 10-match winning streak which had started at the Madrid Masters.
After the two players had traded the first two sets, the Ukrainian No.1 simply ran away with the third. She broke the Halep serve thrice to go up 5-0 before the stunned Romanian could manage to win a game. However, an comeback thoughts that Halep might have had were promptly shut off by Svitolina who closed out the game with a cross-court forehand.
“Thank you everyone, for having faith in me… this win will certainly give me a lot of confidence going into the French Open,” Svitolina, who rose to a career-best World No.6 after her win, said in a courtside interview. “Today everything fell into place and I played one of the best matches of my career.”
Halep had made a great start winning the first set. Both players traded early breaks in the second, but then as Svitolina’s groundstrokes started finding their mark, Halep’s game began to disintegrate. She started making unforced errors and Svitolina broke her in the 12th game of the second set to restore parity. The third set was a one-sided affair as Svitolina closed out the match in 129 minutes against the fifth-seeded Romanian.
Earlier in a late night match played Saturday second seed Novak Djokovic put up a ruthless display to demolish Rafa Nadal’s conqueror Dominic Thiem, 6-1, 6-0 to seal a summit clash against German teenager Alexander Zverev. “It was my best performance of the year,” said Djokovic after his 59-minute win over Thiem.
Zverev, 20, became the youngest player in a decade to reach a Masters final when he clinched a gutsy 6-4 6-7 (5/7) 6-1 win over big-serving American John Isner.
Djokovic was the previous youngest Masters finalist, going all the way to the title in Miami as a 19-year-old in 2007.
It was expected Thiem would stretch Dojokovic, but the Austrian’s dream run was quickly brought to an end by the clinical Serbian as he took his record to 5-0 against the 23-year-old.
Except for an odd aberration here and there, Djokovic played what can be termed ‘perfect’ tennis. His shots found corners and angles with Federer-like precision and for most part of the match Thiem was left shaking his head in exasperation. The Serbian who will be playing his eight final here will be seeking his sixth title.
Agencies
