The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Radwanska eliminates Kvitova, reaches final
Top seed denies Kvitova three-peat, will face Svitolina for championship
NEW HAVEN >> Three-peat? Not quite.
Petra Kvitova not only fell short of winning the Connecticut Open for a third straight year and fourth time overall, she failed to win even three games in her semifinal match with Agnieszka Radwanska. But at least she won two. “I’m glad I didn’t get a bagel, actually,” an exhausted Kvitova said with a smile after being dispatched 6-1, 6-1 on Friday night at the Connecticut Tennis Center at Yale. “That was a positive.”
Radwanska, the tournament’s top seed, dominated from the start, winning the first five games and breaking Kvitova five times en route to an easy win that took just 77 minutes to complete.
“I didn’t really expect that quick of a match, for sure,” the Polish native said. “Everything was working for me tonight. I was really playing great, solid tennis from the beginning till the end.”
Radwanska, the No. 4 player in the world, will face No. 23 Elina Svitolina in the finals on Saturday at 4 p.m. Radwanska is 2-0 all-time against Svitolina.
“She’s a really young, talented player,” Radwanska said. “She can do everything on the court. Very tricky as well. (It’s)
another great challenge for me to play someone like that. This is, for sure, one of the younger players that we going to see much more often in the finals.”
Predicted Kvitova: “If (Radwanska’s) playing like today, I definitely think that she will win.”
Kvitova, who took bronze in the Rio Olympics three weeks ago, said she’s been battling fatigue — as well as a cold.
“I was just running out (of) steam,” she said. “It’s been a tough three weeks for me with Rio and a week off between Rio and here ... It’s difficult. I wasn’t really feeling my best. (I was) tired from the last couple of days. I didn’t think I really put all my, like, power to the balls because I wasn’t really there with my legs. It was really tough to hit it really hard.”
But she wasn’t about to take any credit away from Radwanska, who doesn’t hit the ball particularly hard, rarely registering much more than 100 MPH on her first serve and often sitting in the mid-70s on her second.
“I feel that I can return the first serve a little bit better than the second because I feel that the second, it’s very slow, I don’t know what I should do with that,” Kvitova said. “It’s just weird. I mean, she’s putting everything in. I think she’s trying to put more percentage of the first serve. It’s really helpful. She’s really good with the placement. It’s not really, like, fast, but the placement is very good, which sometimes is more difficult than the speed.”
Said Radwanska: “I was trying to mix it up. I just knew from her turn, everything is going so fast. I prepare for that. I know I have to mix it up, not play with the same rhythm all the time. I also tried to change the placement. That’s what I did. I guess it was working.”
Kvitova was looking to match Venus Williams (1999-2002) and Caroline Wozniacki (2008-11) as the event’s only four-time champion. She won the event in 2012, 2014 and 2015, sandwiched around a runner-up finish to Simona Halep in 2013. She would have also joined Williams and Wozniacki as the only players to win the event three straight years.
But Radwanska, who hadn’t advanced past the quarterfinals in her first five visits to New Haven, had other plans.
“I think being in the final in another tournament is always very exciting,” she said. “I’m so happy with that. My (sixth) appearance (in New Haven) I could be in the final, so I’m happy with that. I just hope I can play the same great tennis (Saturday).”
In all, it’s been a bit of a down year for Kvitova. She suffered a gastrointestinal illness at the start of the season that forced her to miss a couple of events. Currently ranked No. 15 in the world, it’s her lowest ranking since May, 2011 (No. 18).
Now, she gets a couple of days off to rest and recuperate before beginning U.S. Open play on Monday.
“I wish I played Tuesday, but that’s how it is,” she rued. “I have to take it like that.”
And after a long embrace with tournament director Anne Worcester in the middle of her postmatch press conference, Kvitova pledged her continued love for the tournament and hoped to return next year.
“It’s a long time I’m sitting here as the defeated player, right?,” she noted. “It’s not the best, but I think that I played good tournament here. I was in the semifinal. After a tough season for me so far, it’s always a great result to play good tennis.”
Net notes
• Attendance for Friday’s afternoon (4,184) and night (5,073) sessions were both highs for the week.
• In the doubles finals on Saturday, Kateryna Bondarenko of Ukraine and ChiaJung Chuang of Chinese Tapei will face India’s Sania Mirza and Romania’s Monica Niculescu. The match begins at 1:30 p.m. at stadium court.