Debutantes Badosa, Sakkari off to dream starts

GUADALAJARA • Spaniard Paula Badosa overcame a slow start to take down Belarusian top seed Aryna Sabalenka after Maria Sakkari continued her dominance of Iga Swiatek in the round-robin stage of the WTA Finals in Guadalajara, Mexico on Thursday.

Badosa stunned world No. 2 Sabalenka 6-4, 6-0, winning the last 10 games, while Sakkari secured a comfortable 6-2, 6-4 win over Poland's Swiatek.

Badosa was 2-4 down in the first set but she withstood Sabalenka's early power to take the opening set.

The 23-year-old, who lifted the Indian Wells title last month, closed out the match with a bagel in the second set as she celebrated a win under the lights on her WTA Finals debut.

Asked how she bounced back from her shaky start, Badosa said: "I said to myself, okay, now you have to be at her level, aggressive, because she was being very aggressive. I said, 'Now you have to change, stop waiting for her miss and go for it'. That's what I did."

Earlier, Sakkari got an early service break to take a 2-1 lead and grabbed the first set when Swiatek sent a forehand into the net when returning a second serve.

Swiatek improved in the second set but Sakkari converted her third break-point opportunity for a 4-3 lead that looked decisive given Sakkari's dominant serving.

The Greek won 26 of 27 first-serve points and was never broken in the contest played on the purple court in the high-altitude Mexican City.

Before match point, Swiatek appeared to start crying and after clinching victory, Sakkari comforted her at the net with a hug.

"I saw that she was struggling. It wasn't a nice thing to see from the other side of the net," Sakkari said of her 20-year-old opponent, who won last year's French Open.

"She's a very, very nice girl. We always have great practices and great chats. It was something natural," she added of the hug.

Sakkari improved to 3-0 against Swiatek, with all of those wins coming this year. The powerful Greek is enjoying a breakthrough year, having reached the semi-finals of the French Open and US Open to secure a career-high world ranking of No. 6.

The WTA Finals divides the players into two groups of four to play in a round-robin format, with each player competing in three matches.

The top two from each group will advance to the semi-finals.

The WTA Finals were not held last year because of the Covid-19 pandemic and were originally scheduled to take place in Shenzhen before being moved because of pandemic-related travel restrictions in China.

REUTERS

Day 3: Session 2, StarHub Ch201, 9.30am