Donna Vekic puts a Croatian accent at the Monterrey Open

Donna Vekic resisted all the counterattack of the favorite of the royal tournament: Caroline Garcia. The Croatian tennis player earned the respect of Mexican fans, showing calm and strategy before the fierce Caroline. After three sets the match was defined by Donna, winning 6-4, 3-6, 7-5 and being crowned in the fifteenth edition of the GNP Seguros Open.

In 2013, the Croatian played in Monterrey one of her first tournaments as a professional at the age of 17, and now she returned as number 31 in the ranking to lift the trophy.

The Croatian stood firm and in the tenth game she rose from three break points to save the game and take the first set.

With the game reaching its last stages, when it seemed that everything would be defined in sudden death, the 26-year-old Croatian managed to break García’s serve to win the championship.

Vekic won her fourth WTA title, while the French tennis player, who counting the match in Monterrey, has lost two finals in Mexico.

The Open featured two finalists who had never met for the title. This will be the second Final that they will play between them, the previous one was played in the Nottingham tournament with victory for the French.

García played his second Final in Monterrey after the one he played in 2015 and which he lost to the Swiss Timea Bacsinszky.

Both finalists are the best seeds in the competition; the French is in fifth place (in the ranking) and the Croatian is in position 31. García and Vekic have met ten times, of which the Croatian has won six of them.

Before the final on MTY, the last time they played was at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics where Vekic beat Garcia in three tight sets, and on the WTA circuit they met in 2019 where the Croatian also won in two sets. .

“It was a crazy game until the end, [García] he was playing very well, playing very deep. He was trying to earn as many points as he could. It was not easy, but I am very happy to win. It has been a great start to the year for me. If the title hadn’t arrived now, I think it would have arrived sooner. So I’ve been playing some good tennis, and I just need to keep working hard and I hope to stay,” Vekic said after his win.

COLOMBIANS ARE CROWNED DOUBLES

The home tennis player, Fernanda Contreras and the Australian Kimblerly Birrell lost in the doubles final against Yuliana Lizarazo and María Paulina Pérez by partials of 6-3, 5-7 and 10-5.

In the “match tie break” the South Americans showed superiority to win the match. The title was defined in sudden death to 10 points, where the South Americans began dominating by going 4-0 up.

deportes@eleconmista.mx