France’s Parmentier wins WTA Quebec City crown

QUEBEC CITY: French eighth seed Pauline Parmentier captured her fourth career WTA title on Sunday, beating US qualifier Jessica Pegula 7-5, 6-2 in the WTA Quebec City tournament final.

Parmentier, ranked 69th, took her second title of the year in 86 minutes while denying Pegula in her first WTA final.

Parmentier improved to 4- 0 in career WTA finals after Tashkent in 2007, Bad Gastien in 2008 and April’s Istanbul Cup, which snapped a title drought three months shy of a decade.

Parmentier was only 2-15 going into Istanbul but is 18-12 since then.

At 227th, Pegula was the lowestranked player to reach a WTA final since 254th-ranked Barbora Krejcikova last year in Nurnberg. The runner-up effort will lift her back into the top 150.

Pegula is the daughter of billionaire Terry Pegula and his wife Kim, owners of the NFL Buffalo Bills and National Hockey League Buffalo Sabres.

Parmentier, 32, won her only prior meeting with Pegula, 24, in the 2012 ITF Tour Marseille semifinals.

Pegula’s only prior WTA semifinal was at Washington in 2016, when she upset Australia’s Samantha Stosur in the quarterfinals.

Pegula was the third qualifier to reach a WTA final this year after Belarusian Aliaksandra Sasnovich in Brisbane, at the start of January, and US teen Amanda Anisimova, who played her final in Hiroshima earlier on Sunday. The last to win a title was Kazakhstan’s Zarina Diyas in Tokyo last year. — AFP