After Karolina Pliskova dominated Venus Williams in the opening match of the 2017 BNP Paribas WTA Finals Singapore presented by SC Global, Garbine Muguruza won the White Group’s second match on Sunday with a solid 6-3 6-4 victory over Jelena Ostapenko, who is now working with former Latvian ATP player Andis Juska and not with Spain’s Anabel Medina Garrigues that helped her win the French Open this season.
The first set was quite a break fest (there were a total of five breaks), with the second-seeded Muguruza always being the first to take charge and the seventh-seeded Ostapenko catching up. The determining factor was that Muguruza was all over Ostapenko’s second serve, as the Latvian’s stats show 1/9 in that department.
The second set was more straightforward, but when Muguruza had a chance to serve it out while leading 5-2, the 20-year-old Ostapenko powered through the next two games. Using her second opportunity to close the match on her serve, Muguruza finally converted her third match point when Ostapenko netted a backhand.
That’s all for today. On Monday the Red Group players kick off their Singapore campaigns: first Simona Halep vs. Caroline Garcia and then Elina Svitolina vs. Caroline Wozniacki.
Jelena looked a bit flat. Garbi is on fire! She really wants to regain the top position!