World No.1 Iga Swiatek soared to her fourth title of the season Sunday with a 6-0, 6-1 win over Laura Siegemund in the final of the BNP Paribas Warsaw Open, her home tournament.
Swiatek picked up her 15th career title with the victory, adding to triumphs this year in Doha, Stuttgart and Roland Garros, and didn't lost a set over the course of the tournament.
"I want to thank my team and my family. It's not easy to play in Warsaw, but I'm so happy that we could manage and do everything we could today, after a pretty tiring day yesterday," Swiatek said.
"I wanted to put it all in and go for it. I'm pretty happy that I did."
Before taking the court against Siegemund, Swiatek finished off her semifinal against Yanina Wickmayer, 6-1, 7-6(6). The match was suspended on Saturday night due to darkness at 6-1, 5-5 -- after Swiatek led 5-2 and had three match points at 5-3 in the second set. Upon resumption, she was two points away from being pushed to a third set at 30-30 and deuce serving down 6-5, and needed three more match points in the tiebreak after nearly losing a 5-1 lead to seal victory.
But there was no such trouble against Siegemund in a championship match that lasted just 68 minutes. She broke Siegemund five times and never faced a break point to improve to 2-0 against the German all-time.
Siegemund, playing her first final since winning the 2017 Porsche Tennis Grand Prix, upset No.4 seed Zhu Lin in the second round and spent more than six hours on court Saturday in winning her quarterfinal and semifinal matches against Lucrezia Stefanini and Tatjana Maria, which were played back-to-back as a result of rain earlier in the week.
"I'm sorry I couldn't put up more of a battle today, but it was a little bit too much yesterday," Siegemund said. "I tried my best, but the legs, they stayed at the hotel today.
"But for me, it was really a great success anyway ... it was almost a win for me to be a final at all. It's been a long time. On such a great stage with such great spectators. ... I just enjoyed it."
Swiatek was equally complimentary of Siegemund's effort for the week. The World No.153 is projected to rise more than 40 places in Monday's rankings.
"Laura, what you did yesterday was pretty surreal," Swiatek said. I don't know if anyone would be able to survive that, but you did. Congratulations for this run, because it's been a pretty great week, and it's nice that we could play this final."
87 - Iga Swiatek is 87-13 after her first 100 matches as the #1 in the world - the exact same record of the last player able to reach the mark of 100 WTA matches as #1, Serena Williams. Duo.
This was fun, and boy did Iga have to work for it playing back to back matches over 2 days. Wickmayer in particular really tested Iga mentally.
A great way to start off the hardcourt season with a win on home soil.
The first Polish woman ever to do so in the Open Era.
Another one for the history books.
Doesn't get better really.
On to the hardcourts of North America next.
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