In a match between the youngest and the oldest player in the field, looking to record their first win in the White Group of the 2017 BNP Paribas WTA Finals Singapore presented by SC Global, having lost their opening matches on Sunday, Venus Williams defeated Jelena Ostapenko in a rollercoaster encounter that featured almost uncountable trades of breaks, spreading over three hours and 13 minutes, the third-longest match in Singapore history.
In a nutshell, the fifth-seeded Williams earned a love break when Ostapenko was serving for the opening set at 5-4, winning as many as six straight games to go from 3-5 in the first to 2-0 in the second set. The see-saw nature of the match resumed then, as the seventh-seeded Ostapenko won three games in a row (two breaks) to again earn a lead, 3-2, and even though Williams managed to level the score again, Ostapenko’s fighting spirit never abandoned her and the Latvian even saved a match point in the tenth game to eventually take the match through a tiebreak to the deciding set, producing clean stats with 3/3 break point conversion and 20 winners to just 8 unforced errors in the second set.
The decider continued the nature of the first two sets, as after six straight breaks of serve and two holds, Williams broke once more and finally played a good service game to win the match 7-5 6-7(3) 7-5. Leading into the WTA Finals, Ostapenko hit a WTA leading 359 double faults this season, while today against Williams she added 13 more to that number.
Williams’ round-robin score now includes this win over Ostapenko and a loss to Karolina Pliskova, while Ostapenko added today’s defeat to Sunday’s White Group defeat to Garbine Muguruza.
Jelena is still playing great. I think if she was in a different group, she can really play well. Nonetheless, she should be proud of her achievements this year. I know she’ll be a Top 10 fixture from now on.