Tennis: Top-ranked Swiatek beats Vekic for WTA San Diego title

SAN DIEGO -- World number one Iga Swiatek captured her 11th career WTA title and her eighth of the year on Sunday by outlasting 77th-ranked Donna Vekic in the San Diego Open final.

Three-time Grand Slam champion Swiatek defeated the 26-year-old Croatian 6-3, 3-6, 6-0 for her WTA-best 64th match victory of 2022.

"It was a really tight match and pretty long," Swiatek said. "We felt the intensity for sure. At the end I wanted to be the one who played the last ball in."

Swiatek took her prior titles this year at the US and French Opens as well as Qatar, Indian Wells, Miami, Stuttgart and Rome.

The 21-year-old Polish star bounced back in her ninth championship match of the year after losing last week's final at Ostrava to Czech Barbora Krejcikova.

In a rain-halted semi-final delayed to Sunday afternoon, Vekic rallied from 4-2 down in the third set when showers struck to defeat 19th-ranked American Danielle Collins, this year's Australian Open runner-up, by 6-4, 4-6, 7-6 (7/2).

That left her only a short rest break before facing Swiatek for the title, but she tested the top-ranked star through two sets.

Swiatek broke in the sixth game and held twice to capture the first set after 40 minutes when Vekic netted a backhand.

In the second set, Vekic broke on a forehand crosscourt winner for a 4-2 lead and held twice to force a third set. It caused Swiatek to step up her form.

"I wanted to give it all, and knowing how Donna can serve, I wanted to be more loosened up on my return games -- not think, just relax and let my instincts take over," Swiatek said.

She broke on a forehand winner to seize a 2-0 edge in the decider, broke again in the fourth game and captured the match after one hour and 47 minutes when Vekic double faulted away a last break.

Vekic was in her first WTA final since she won her third career title last October at Courmayeur, Italy.

Agence France-Presse

Vekic savours coming-of-age win over Konta in Nottingham

Croatia's Donna Vekic came from a set down to win the Nottingham grasscourt event in a pulsating final against Britain's Johanna Konta on Sunday to remind the tennis world why she was once considered one of the game's hottest prospects.

As a teenager, Vekic won her first tour tournament three years ago but had not won one since, enduring some tough times before this 2-6 7-6(3) 7-5 major breakthrough win over the home favourite, world number eight Konta.


In a thrilling 2-1/2 hour contest in which momentum switched dramatically, the hard-hitting Vekic, who is still only 20, was left feeling very emotional after a second tight tussle in 24 hours following her dramatic semi-final win over Lucie Safarova.

Vekic is probably best known now as the girlfriend of Swiss three-times grand slam champion Stan Wawrinka but in 2012, when she reached her first WTA Tour final in Tashkent, the Croat was known only as a remarkable teenage prospect in the women's game.


"It's pretty amazing. The last time I played a final, I wasn't allowed to have champagne," she told the crowd, laughing. "I'm going to drink a bottle of champagne with my team to celebrate."

At 16, Vekic was runner-up in another Wimbledon warm-up event in Birmingham, prompting former champion Chris Evert to predict a top-10 career for the Croat but she has never come remotely near to those heights.

Yet with her 21st birthday coming later this month, Sunday's victory over Konta felt like the tennis coming-of-age for a player who had finished outside the top 100 in the last two seasons but who now reckons she has become older and wiser.

Konta, who had been hot favourite to annex her first grasscourt title, said: "She was able to continuously raise her level throughout that match and I was just not able to stay with her, so full credit to her for playing incredibly well."

Konta, who has won two finals already this year in Sydney and Miami, had been expected to become the first British woman to win a tournament on home soil for 36 years since Sue Barker triumphed in Brighton.

It all looked plain sailing as she outclassed the nervy world number 70 in the opening set but Vekic gradually relaxed and went for broke, finding the lines consistently with her bigger groundstrokes.

After Vekic had let a 3-1 lead slip in the deciding set, Konta appeared to be surging towards the title as she moved into a 4-3 lead but the Croatian held her nerve to break for a 6-5 lead and then served out for victory.

(Reporting by Ian Chadband; Editing by Ken Ferris)

source: news.abs-cbn.com