Iga Swiatek was triumphant in holding onto her 2022 Porsche Tennis Grand Prix title on Sunday. The top seed from Poland convincingly beat Aryna Sabalenka 6-3, 6-4 in a match that finished 10 minutes shy of two hours to claim the title.
In a final that saw the same two contestants as last year, the result, too, was the same. Swiatek needed just one break of serve across each set to pip Sabalenka’s dream of winning her first title in the German event.
In the first set, Swiatek secured a break in the eighth game and in the second set, she broke Sabalenka in the second game of the set itself. The world no. 2’s struggles to win second-serve points also told on her as the match progressed. Swiatek won 64% of points on return on second serves. The world’s best player also finished with 77% of her first-serve points while Sabalenka won 67% of her first-serve points. For the match, Swiatek finished with 73 points, 14 more than Sabalenka’s 59.
Post-match, Swiatek said, “I wanted to win really, really hard, but I knew that I can’t really focus on that and just I have to keep doing my job as I did on previous matches. I’m pretty happy that I could kind of have good mentality and just focus on what I want to do tennis-wise.”
Winning the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix allowed Iga Swiatek to make a positive restart to her season after she was forced to take a brief injury-related break after Indian Wells. For Aryna Sabalenka, the loss’ meant that she’s now lost a trio of finales she’s contested in the WTA event. Swiatek now holds a 5-2 win-to-loss record against Sabalenka.
Photo Credit: Porsche Tennis Grand Prix Twitter