{"id":20557,"date":"2023-04-23T13:49:13","date_gmt":"2023-04-23T13:49:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/tennis-swiatek-beats-sabalenka-in\/"},"modified":"2023-04-23T13:50:13","modified_gmt":"2023-04-23T13:50:13","slug":"tennis-swiatek-beats-sabalenka-in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/tennis-swiatek-beats-sabalenka-in\/","title":{"rendered":"Tennis-Swiatek beats Sabalenka in straight sets to win Stuttgart title"},"content":{"rendered":"

STUTTGART, Germany (Reuters) -World number one Iga Swiatek cruised past Aryna Sabalenka 6-3 6-4 to win the Stuttgart Open on Sunday in a repeat of last year’s final to confirm her status as a French Open favourite.<\/p>\n

The Pole, back from injury and gearing up for her French Open title defence next month, and world number two Sabalenka traded powerful baseline blows before Swiatek earned a second breakpoint at 4-3.<\/p>\n

She whipped a superb forehand down the line to go 5-3 up before easily holding serve to clinch the first set on her second set point.<\/p>\n

Swiatek, fit again following a rib injury that forced her to withdraw ahead of the Miami Open and Billie Jean King Cup qualifiers after she hurt herself during her run to the Indian Wells semi-finals last month, broke her opponent again in the first game of the second set.<\/p>\n

Belarusian Sabalenka started to pile up unforced errors and struggled with her serve at 2-0 before firing a cross-court forehand to hold.<\/p>\n

But she could not break Swiatek back and the Pole held serve at 5-4 to seal her second title of the year. <\/p>\n

“I want to thank my team because it has been such an intense time. I am so happy we are making the right decisions,” Swiatek said, following her well-timed return from injury.<\/p>\n

“It is a pretty exciting time. I will be coming back because I love this tournament.”<\/p>\n

While Swiatek won it for a second consecutive time, it was Sabalenka’s third straight loss in the final in Stuttgart.<\/p>\n

(Reporting by Karolos Grohmann; editing by Clare Fallon and Hugh Lawson)<\/p>\n

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STUTTGART, Germany (Reuters) -World number one Iga Swiatek cruised past Aryna Sabalenka 6-3 6-4 to win the Stuttgart Open on Sunday in a repeat of last year’s final to confirm her status as a French Open favourite. The Pole, back from injury and gearing up for her French Open title defence next month, and world […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":20586,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1219],"tags":[1223],"class_list":["post-20557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-u-s-sports","tag-updated"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-content\/uploads\/Reuters_Direct_Media\/USOnlineReportSportsNews\/tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXNPEJ3M053-VIEWIMAGE.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20557"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20557\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20591,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20557\/revisions\/20591"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}