Caroline Wozniacki thrashes Elina Svitolina in WTA Finals

SINGAPORE: World number six Caroline Wozniacki posted her first win over Elina Svitolina in grand style with a straight sets thrashing in the WTA Finals on Monday.

Denmark’s Wozniacki had previously lost all three matches to Svitolina, including crushing finals losses in Dubai and Toronto this year, but overcame her nemesis with a 6-2, 6-0 destruction in just 59 minutes.

Opening her WTA Finals campaign, Wozniacki won 10 straight games to continue a trend of one-sided matches at the Singapore Indoor Stadium.

Players with previous experience on the slower court in Singapore have won all four matches during the opening two nights.

Wozniacki, who played in Singapore in 2014, completely overwhelmed the Ukrainian in a perfect start in her bid to regain the world’s number one ranking after a five-year drought. The 27-year-old is one of seven players in the tournament in the running for the prized top ranking.

The lopsided result seemed unlikely in the early going with both players slugging from the baseline in almost identical fashion.

But Wozniacki started finding her range to peel off winners and she claimed a decisive break in the sixth game. She closed out the first set by breaking Svitloina, whose error-riddled performance delivered eight unforced errors in the opening set.

Conversely, Wozniacki had 11 winners and just five unforced errors in a dominant first set. Svitolina had a chance to get back into the contest with a break point to start the second set but Wozniacki held on and subsequently broke.

She broke two more times to storm through the set in just 26 minutes.

AFP