Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships, UAE

Championship Match: [4] Petra Kvitova (CZE) vs. [45] Belinda Bencic (SUI)

They first played against each other on the WTA Tour in 2013, then in 2018 and again earlier this year; all three encounters were on hard court and all were won in straight sets by the Czech. Bencic was hoping today’s encounter would produce a different result.

Bencic was once ranked as high as number seven back in 2016. Like so many tennis players, she was sidelined by injury and surgery, which derailed her career and caused her ranking to fall outside of the top hundred. It has been a slow process back; however, the Swiss miss seems to have found her top form this week.

En route to the final, Bencic dispatched of the number eighth, third and sixth seeds. Today she faced off against the number two seed. She broke early, which placed a lot of pressure immediately on her opponent. Down two breaks in the first set, Kvitova found her return game to get back one of the breaks but that was all Bencic allowed in the first set. In fact, she broke Kvitova for a third time to win the set 6-3.

The second set was total domination from Kvitova, who broke early and never looked back. It seemed as if all the momentum had shifted to her side of the net; yet, Bencic has proven this week that she is willing to battle no matter the score and she did so again in this match. Bencic replaced the transient loss of focus in the second set with complete focus in the deciding set. She found her serve again, protected it better with some great defensive shots, and broke Kvitova twice to secure her first victory against the Czech.

Bencic won 6-3, 1-6, 6-2 and claimed her first WTA Tour title since 2017.