Rome Masters: Svitolina wins back to back titles over Halep
Elina Svitolina was on fire that helped her secure another title at the BNL Internazionali D’Italia Sunday. With a flat challenge from world number one Simona Halep, the Ukrainian breezed through the opening set to secure her title defense winning 6-0, 6-4 on Corte Centrale at Foro Italico. It was the third time that the 23 year old won back to back titles in her career securing the 15th.
The two met four times last season with the Ukrainian winning three of them. It has been exactly a year since she faced the Romanian in the final going three sets. Both have played the distance at least once with Halep getting through her against Maria Sharapova who needed a lot of push to return back to back here. With her number one rank locked going into the French Open, the 26 year old eyed revenge on Svitolina to stop her title defense.
The world number four came out fast, breaking Halep’s opening serve before putting plenty of security to hold her own. She easily attained the double break on the world number one answering the accurate shots from Halep before landing a redirect winner to end the third. The first serve of the Romanian was mute as she had one point through four games that gave Svitolina a clean service to love. The errors were rolling high for the top seed that gave the fourth seed a 5-0 run after 14 minutes.
In a necessary meeting with her coach Darren Cahill, his words of wisdom were minimal as it seemed that something else was bothering the Romanian. She had 25 errors already which caused Cahill to make an abrupt exit from the court. With the match running one way for the world number four, she was easily able to reach three match points smashing a cross-court winner to end things in 19 minutes and a bagel to the world number one. The 26 year old finished with an extreme 15 percent of first serve points and 12 service points lost because of it. The need for her to put it aside and start the match new was the only solution to a possible comeback.
She did just that to start the second putting a lot more balls in the court but still slow to rise to a level of control. She showed some fight to challenge Svitolina on deuce in the second but unable to secure the break she wished for. Halep showed her power to dig in but despite making things difficult for Svitolina, her opponent answered every return on deuce to achieve the AD point and the break.
The number one seed took the loss hard letting Svitolina take another serve to love in the fourth opening the gap. A solid blanking of Svitolina in the fifth was just what the doctor ordered to her game but a call for the physio to treat a back problem enabled a medical timeout. When she returned the court, the issue was not helped as Svitolina held to keep two games between each other.
Halep fought for control in the seventh that saw her and Svitolina getting into deep rallies that at one point saved her serve to deuce. After two breaks she got the result she wanted saving three points in the process. The danger loomed as the Ukrainian went to work overcoming two straight winners from Halep to conduct the eighth game. The 23 year old played for the match on Halep’s last chance that went to deuce but couldn’t deal with line drive winners on the backhand side that kept her alive.
It was the Ukrainian who would have to serve it out in the tenth reaching two championship points with the second chance working as Halep committed a third error in the game that closed out things in one hour and seven minutes for the repeat to come true. The achievement put her in the likes of Chrissy Evert and Conchita Martinez who have won back to back titles in Rome as well in other tournaments. With one week before the French Open, both Svitolina and Halep would take much needed time off before the big journey got underway.