Hungarian tennis star Babos wins WTA Finals for 3rd time in a row!
Tímea Babos – along with her doubles partner Kristina Mladenovic – defeated Hsieh Su-Wei and Barbora Strýcová to win the WTA Finals in Shenzhen, China, for the third time in a row.
As reported by nemzetisport.hu, this feat has not been replicated since 1998, when Lindsay Davenport won the doubles tournament for the third consecutive time. The result means that the Hungarian-French team have a 100% success rate (2 out of 2) in winning the final of this event. Babos won the final in 2017 with Czech player Andrea Hlaváčková.
Babos and Mladenovic got off to a flying start by breaking the serve of the Taiwanese-Czech duo at their first opportunity. Su-Wei lost her round of serving as well, meaning Babos and Mladenovic wrapped up the fate of the first set in 25 minutes by winning it 6-1.
The second set proved to be more difficult as Babos lost her serve. However, the Hungarian-French pairing redeemed themselves by breaking Su-Wei-Strýcová straight away. The set appeared to be balanced at 2-2, however, a set of impressively won points by Babos-Mladenovic seemed to have mentally defeated Su-Wei-Strýcová; the Hungarian-French team were able to break once again.
Babos-Mladenovic were able to hold their serve for the rest of the games. They eventually won the set 6-3, winning the whole match in 64 minutes.
This was Babos’s third win, second with Mladenovic. In addition to Lindsay Davenport and Babos, there are only 8 players to have been able to win the WTA Finals doubles tournament three times: Martina Hingis, Liezel Huber, Lisa Raymond, Cara Black, Natasa Zvereva, Billie Jean King, and Betty Stöve. However, she still has a way to go to catch 10-time winner Pam Shriver and 13-time champion Martina Navratilová.
Last week, the Hungarian U-17 national football team topped their Euro qualifying group. The new Puskás Arena has been sold out for its opening game against Uruguay.
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Source: nemzetisport.hu