World number three Simona Halep made her home country proud by winning the inaugural staging of the Bucharest Open, while Andrea Petkovic came out as the winner of Bad Gastein, the other WTA event that took place this week.
Just about ten days after playing the semifinals of Wimbledon, Halep cruised past Roberta Vinci 6-1 6-3 in the Bucharest final and won her eighth career title, in the Romanian capital. Halep’s first six titles came last season (Nürnberg, ‘s-Hertogenbosch, Budapest, New Haven, Moscow, Sofia), while earlier this year she won Doha. Halep was the tournament’s top seed and seed No.2 Vinci was her first seeded opponent all week.
The world No.20 Petkovic had a much tougher run at the Nürnberger Gastein Ladies. In the first round, the fourth-seeded German had to save set points in both sets to defeat Jana Cepelova 7-6(8) 7-5, her semifinal against Grace Min featured three long sets, while in the final she faced American Shelby Rogers, who had ousted clay masters, seed No.3 Carla Suarez Navarro and seed No.2 Sara Errani, despite having never previously won back-to-back WTA matches. Petkovic triumphed 6-3 6-3 and half of those 18 games were breaks of serve. Andrea also won Bad Gastein in 2009, when she was a world No.98 and just like Shelby without two straight WTA wins to her name. (photo: Jimmie48)
