Spain's Muguruza bests Kontaveit to win WTA Finals title

Spains Garbine Muguruza fought back from a break down in the second set winning the last four games of the match to defeat No 8 seed Anett Kontaveit of Estonia 63 75 and win her first WTA Finals Championship in the process bagging a milestone 10th career WTA singles titleThe biggest title of Garbines career was her third title of the year and it came on Wednesday night in front of an excited crowd in GuadalajaraGarbine is the first Spaniard to win the WTA Finals singles title in the events history Former World No1 Arantxa Sanchez Vicario was the only other player from Spain to reach the WTA Finals singles championship match finishing as runnerup to Stefanie Graf in 1993The Spaniard started well and survived a wobble in the second set to earn a hardfought winTwo relatively close sets went the way of Garbine due to her greater effectiveness in returning second serves Anett only won 38 percent of the Spaniards secondservice points while Muguruza claimed nearly 60 percent of points off the Estonians second deliveryGarbine and Anett were nearly evenly matched in winners during the clash with 16 for the Spaniard and 15 for Anett But Garbine played the cleaner match overall with 14 fewer unforced errors than AnettFormer World No1 Garbine Muguruza thus became the only player to defeat Anett Kontaveit within the last month and she did it twice this week Garbine ended he Estonians 12match winning streak in the roundrobin portion of the competition and repeated the feat in the singles finalIt was a fitting finale to the last WTA tourlevel match of the season as Anett and Garbine rank first and second in hardcourt wins this season with 39 and 35 titles respectively But Garbine was able to prevail in an hour and 38 minutes this time around improving to 42 overall against AnettWith this victory twotime Grand Slam champion Garbine Muguruza is projected to rise to World No3 in the upcoming seasonending rankings That will be Garbine Muguruzas best yearend ranking since she finished 2017 ranked World No2 Kontaveit for her efforts is projected to hit a new careerhigh ranking of World No7A tense first set saw the pair exchange breaks early before Anett Kontaveit dropped a backhand into the net to give Garbine a 43 lead Garbine eased through the opening set from there winning the last four games as she sealed the oneset lead with a deft lob winnerIt was Anett though who grabbed the early lead in the second set as Garbines miscues particularly from the forehand side started to mount A forehand error resulted in the Spaniard losing her serve and Anett used her powerful play to consolidate and build a 53 leadHowever with Kontaveit serving for the set Garbine pulled back level at 55 after playing a forehand winner down the line on the breakpoint Garbine dominated from there on winning the final four games for the second set in a row Garbine broke Anett at love to wrap up the win and take home the yearend crownThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever