Pouille eases past Tsonga to take title

LUCAS Pouille halted Jo-Wilfried Tsonga’s charge in the Vienna Open yesterday, scoring a comfortable straight-sets victory over his French compatriot to claim his third title of the season.

World No 25 Pouille, who won 6-1 6-4, converted three out of seven break points and saved two on his serve to prevail in an hour and 11 minutes at the Wiener Stadthalle to dent Tsonga’s chances of qualifying for the ATP Finals in London next month.

Tsonga is now 295 points behind Spain’s Pablo Carreno Busta, who holds the final qualifying spot.

The two remaining places for the season-ending event will be decided in the Paris Masters, the final tournament of the regular season, which starts today.

Pouille, who has won titles in Budapest and Stuttgart this year, stretched the world No 15 right from the start with a barrage of aggressive baseline shots.

After saving two break points, Tsonga’s only double fault of the match helped Pouille to take a 3-1 lead, and the 23-year-old tightened his grip on the contest to cruise to a one-set lead.

A decisive break in the fifth game of the second set gave Pouille, who fired 17 winners in the match, the advantage at 3-2 and he did not look back.

Meanwhile, Simona Halep set her sights on breaking through for her first grand slam title yesterday, after securing the year-end world No 1 ranking – and a vote of confidence from Roger Federer.

The Romanian became the 13th year-end women’s No 1, despite struggling at the WTA Finals in Singapore, winning just once to bow out at the round-robin stage.

Her next challenge is a maiden grand slam win. Halep came desperately close in this year’s French Open final, when she blew a set and 3-0 lead against 20-year-old Jelena Ostapenko.

“Of course, my new dream is to win a grand slam,” she said in Singapore. “I just want to work harder to get better, because I need to do that and we will see what is going to happen.”

The 26-year-old recently received support from Swiss great Federer, who said Halep deserved to be world No 1.

“I felt really proud of myself that Roger Federer could talk about me like that,” Halep said.

“It’s a great feeling that I can finish the year No 1.” – Reuters, AFP