Eighth seed Belinda Bencic beat fifth seed Daria Kasatkina 6-0, 6-2 in the final to win the seventh Hologic WTA Tour singles title of her career and advance to Adelaide International 2. I ended my week with a bang.
2021 Olympic gold medalist Bencic took just 67 minutes to beat Casatkina and set a new career-high in the city after losing runner-up to Iga Swirtek at the 2021 Adelaide International. I got This is Bencic’s first Australian title.
Read more: 2023 Australian Open draw breakdown
Winner’s words: “I’m happy to show my work here on the court,” Bencic said at the post-match press conference. So I was able to test myself in every possible way and go into the Australian Open with confidence.”
Fast facts: With the win, Bencic leveled head-to-head with Casatkina with three wins each. All six matches in the rivalry have been won in straight sets.
This week, Bencic defeated multiple Top 10 players in a single hard-court tournament for the first time since the 2019 WTA Finals. Bencic beat world No. 4 Caroline Garcia in the quarterfinals and beat world No. 8 Kasatkina on Saturday.
Former world No. 4 Bencic is expected to return to the top 10 at world No. 10 in Monday’s updated rankings. It’s the first time she’s appeared in the top 10 since September 28, 2020.
Match story: It was a command performance of Bencic who ran through the final without facing a break point. Bencic scored his 88% of first serve points on the road to victory.
Bencic started the match with a bang, defeating Kasatkina with love in the opening game. She burst forward from there, unleashing her powerful forehand, forcing Kasatkina to make an error before breaking again to make her 3-0.
The Swiss player completed the first set without incident and ended the first set with the backhand winner. Bencic started the clash eight games in a row before Kasatkina took the board 2-1 in the second set.
Kasatkina fended off the championship points at 5-1 to finally take the second game and force Bencic to serve the title. The reigning Olympic champion did her job, converting her second championship point with an error-forcing backhand.
Doubles day: The Adelaide International 2 doubles final took place on Friday as Luisa Stefani and Taylor Townsend defeated Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova and Jelena Ryvakina 7-5, 7-6 (3) in a tough 1 hour and 45 minutes.
Townsend have completely dominated the Adelaide doubles title over the past two weeks. Last week she won the Adelaide International 1 title alongside Asia Muhammad, Townsend now has her maximum of three titles in her WTA doubles career.
Stephanie has now won six WTA doubles titles, half of which will come after returning to the tour in September 2022 after a year-long absence due to an ACL injury.
It was also a strong comeback week for Pavlyuchenkova, who has not competed in events since May due to her own knee injury.