Barbora Krejcikova won her first title of 2023 and sixth of her career with a 6-4 6-2 victory over Iga Swiatek in the final of the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships.
Following the Australian Open, ruthless Swiatek had dropped just 14 games: five en route to the WTA 1000 Doha title and a total of nine en route to the Dubai final. The unseeded Krejcikova stopped the Pole’s dominance with a straight-set victory in an hour and a half.
In Saturday’s Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships final, the top-seeded Swiatek twice managed to come back from a break down in the first set, recovering from 0-2 to 3-3, and from 3-4 to 4-4, but the most dominant WTA player dropped serve once again and Krejcikova served out the set with a love hold. Both players had a 100% break point conversion rate in the opening set.
In the second set, Krejcikova won the last five games to beat Swiatek for the second time in a row and become the 18th unseeded champion at a WTA 1000 tournament. The 2021 French Open winner Krejcikova defeated four Top 10 players this week in the United Arab Emirates: No.8 Daria Kasatkina, No.2 Aryna Sabalenka, No.3 Jessica Pegula, and finally No.1 Swiatek. Moreover, Krejcikova’s third-round victim was two-time Wimbledon champion Petra Kvitova, now ranked No.15.
Krejcikova will return to the Top 20 when the WTA rankings are updated on Monday, rising to position No.16.
