Former world No. 1 Garbine Muguruza on Wednesday beat Anett Kontaveit 6-3, 7-5 to become the first Spaniard to win the elite season-ending WTA Finals in Guadalajara, Mexico.
Muguruza, winner of the 2016 French Open and 2017 Wimbledon titles, capped a campaign this year that saw her return to the highest level with titles in Dubai and Chicago after three years outside of the top 10.
The 28-year-old is projected to end the year at No. 3 in the world.
Photo: AFP
“I’m just very happy I proved to myself once again I can be the best, I can be the ‘**maestra**,’ like how we say in Spanish,” she said. “That puts me in a very good position for next year, a good ranking. How can I say? A good energy. It’s just the payoff for such a long year.”
“My team and I worked hard. It pays off. Just shows us that we’re doing the right way,” she said.
Muguruza said it was a delight to win “such a big, big, big tournament, the Masters, in Latin America, here in Mexico.”
“I think it’s just perfect,” she said.
Arantxa Sanchez Vicario was the only other Spanish player to reach the WTA Finals championship match, falling to German Steffi Graf in 1993 at Madison Square Garden in New York.
The prestigious event was moved to Guadalajara from Shenzhen because of COVID-19 restrictions in China, and Muguruza — who won back-to-back titles in Monterrey in 2018 and 2019 — was a favorite of Mexican fans.
“Definitely I’m very supported here in Mexico,” she said. “I used it this week for sure.”
Muguruza battled back from a break down in the second set, winning the final four games of the match to seal her 10th career title, breaking Kontaveit at love.
She notched her second win of the tournament against Kontaveit, having ended the Estonian’s 12-match WTA win streak with a must-have round-robin victory on Sunday.
It was the seventh time in WTA Finals history that round-robin opponents have had a rematch in the final.
Kontaveit, whose late-season surge included four titles since August — at Cleveland, Ostrava, Moscow and Cluj-Napoca — is projected to reach a career-high ranking of seventh in the world.
She had dropped her serve just four times in four matches coming into the final, but was broken five times by Muguruza.
“I’d like to congratulate Garbine,” Kontaveit said as she accepted her second-place award. “You’ve beaten me twice this week, that’s just too good.”
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