Top seed Elena Rybakina on Sunday powered to a 6-1, 6-4 victory over Russia’s Daria Kasatkina in the final of the Abu Dhabi Open to lift her second trophy of the season and seventh overall.
The 2022 Wimbledon champion began the contest on Stadium Court in typically dominant fashion by grabbing an early break, but seventh seed Kasatkina struck back with one of her own, only to fall behind again in blustery conditions.
Rybakina regained her composure to go 5-1 up on the back of big serving as Kasatkina struggled for consistency, and the 24-year-old Brisbane champion wrapped up the opening set in 25 minutes when her opponent sent a forehand wide.
Photo: AFP
The pair had come into the contest having split their four meetings — all on hard courts — and Adelaide runner-up Kasatkina showed plenty of fight to pull two breaks back in the next set with relentless baseline hitting and stunning winners.
Level at 4-4, Rybakina turned the heat up to break 26-year-old Kasatkina with a cross-court scorcher and the Moscow-born Kazakh returned after a brief rain delay to secure the victory on serve.
Both players headed to Doha for the Qatar Open, with Kasatkina set to face Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova in her opener yesterday, while Rybakina had a bye into the second round.
“A tough week, especially the last matches, and tomorrow is already a match in Doha [for Kasatkina],” Rybakina said.
“Hopefully, we both recover and do well there, and maybe play [the] final there,” she said.
“I want to thank all the fans who came to support us. It’s been an amazing atmosphere and especially to see the flags from Kazakhstan it really means a lot,” she added.
Kasatkina, who came through a grueling semi-final against Beatriz Haddad Maia on Saturday that lasted nearly three hours, was disappointed with the loss, but remained upbeat about her form early in the season.
“Did I have enough in the tank for the final? I squeezed everything that I had left and it wasn’t enough against a player like Elena ... you have to be at your best to have a chance to beat her,” Kasatkina said.
“Unfortunate that the tournament ended this way, but there’s a lot of positives in the week,” she said. “There’s nothing to be sad about, but of course it’s always disappointing to lose in a final.”
North Korea’s FIFA Under-17 Women’s World Cup-winning team on Saturday received a heroes’ welcome back in the capital, Pyongyang, with hundreds of people on the streets to celebrate their success. They had defeated Spain on penalties after a 1-1 draw in the U17 World Cup final in the Dominican Republic on Nov. 3. It was the second global title in two months for secretive North Korea — largely closed off to the outside world; they also lifted the FIFA U20 Women’s World Cup in September. Officials and players’ families gathered at Pyongyang International Airport to wave flowers and North Korea flags as the
Taiwan’s top table tennis player Lin Yun-ju made his debut in the US professional table tennis scene by taking on a new role as a team’s co-owner. On Wednesday, Major League Table Tennis (MLTT), founded in September last year, announced on its official Web site that Lin had become part of the ownership group of the Princeton Revolution, one of the league’s eight teams. MLTT chief executive officer Flint Lane described Lin’s investment as “another great milestone for table tennis in America,” saying that the league’s “commitment to growth and innovation is drawing attention from the best in the sport, and we’re
Coco Gauff of the US on Friday defeated top-ranked Aryna Sabalenka 7-6 (7/4), 6-3 to set up a showdown with Olympic champion Zheng Qinwen in the final of the WTA Finals, while in the doubles, Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching was eliminated. Gauff generated six break points to Belarusian Sabalenka’s four and built on early momentum in the opening set’s tiebreak that she carried through to the second set. She is the youngest player at 20 to make the final at the WTA Finals since Denmark’s Caroline Wozniacki in 2010. Zheng earlier defeated Wimbledon champion Barbora Krejcikova of the Czech Republic 6-3, 7-5 to book
For King Faisal, a 20-year-old winger from Ghana, the invitation to move to Brazil to play soccer “was a dream.” “I believed when I came here, it would help me change the life of my family and many other people,” he said in Sao Paulo. For the past year and a half, he has been playing on the under-20s squad for Sao Paulo FC, one of South America’s most prominent clubs. He and a small number of other Africans are tearing across pitches in a country known as the biggest producer and exporter of soccer stars in the world, from Pele to Neymar. For