Iga Swiatek Still Too Tough For Jessica Pegula

Iga Swiatek (left) beat Jessica Pegula in the Qatar Open 2023 final. (Photo: Twitter/@WTA)

JAKARTA - Jessica Pegula's hopes of winning the Qatar Open title from Iga Swiatek's hands were dashed. Instead, she had to admit the toughness of the world's number-one female tennis player.

Swiatek effortlessly defeated Pegula in the final match which was played at the Khalifa international tennis and squash Complex in Doha, Saturday, February 18, local time. She won in straight sets 6-3, 6-0

Swiatek also won her second consecutive Qatar Open title. This is also Swiatek's first title in 2023,

Qatar Open 2023 has also added to her collection of titles to 12 throughout her career, as reported by Antara from the official WTA website.

In that match, Swiatek relied a lot on her hard returns to dampen Pegula's serve. She was able to break Pegula's serve at 2-0 and 4-2 in the first set. But after that, Pegula was always able to break Swiatek's serve back, by forcing the Polish tennis player to make mistakes thanks to her movement speed.

Top seed Swiatek then attacked Pegula more with her return shots to break her opponent's serve, and took a 5-3 lead. This time, Swiatek did not let her game down to close the game with a score of 40-0 and won the first set with a score of 6-3.

After a tight first set, Swiatek was unstoppable in the second set. She won 73 percent of the points from returning Pegula's second serve, and broke the American's serve a total of six times. Swiatek also won this match with a total time needed of 69 minutes.

Doha remains a special place for Swiatek. Last year, her title triumph in the Qatari capital started a streak of 37 straight wins, culminating in her second Grand Slam win at the French Open.