POLAND’S Iga Swiatek ended the nine-game winning streak of Estonian Anett Kontaveit overnight, to claim teh 2022 Qatar Open in Doha. The title was Swiatek’s second WTA Tour 1000 of her career – Rome – and made up her fourth career title – going with her Roland Garros and Adelaide International titles – where she needed just an hour and four minutes to cruise to victory. Kontaveit was in great form the last month, but had no answers for the powerful Pole, who smashed her way to a mind-boggling 6-2 6-0 victory.

Swiatek served five aces and won 73.5 per cent of her first serve points off an elite 77.3 per cent clip. By comparison, whilst Kontaveit served at a 75 per cent efficiency without any double faults, she could only manage a poor 42.4 per cent off her first serve, and won just two of 11 off her second. That performance lead her to be broken six times from 11 chances, whilst only able to break once against her opponent.

It was a masterful display from Swiatek, who never looked like losing with her outstanding ability from all sides of the court. Her performance allowed her to move back up to her career-high of fourth overall.

“I’m pretty happy that I was composed and I stayed in the same shape I was for the whole tournament, because playing finals is a different feeling,” Swiatek said post-match. “It’s always a little bit more stress.

“I knew that Anett is going to play well, because she’s shown consistency throughout the whole six months, I would say. I needed to put pressure on her, and I’m pretty happy that I did that well today.

“It’s so nice to have these kind of matches where you don’t actually have problems with keeping the pace and with staying aggressive, because right now I’m a more aggressive player, and I really love it, because it’s giving me a lot of confidence on and off court. It’s just making sometimes life on court easier.”

Though disappointed with the result, Kontaveit was proud of her recent form including at the tournament, and will be rewarded be rising up into the Top 5 for the first time in her career tomorrow.

“Overall I’m very happy and feel like my game is moving in the right direction,” Kontaveit said post-match. “I think the results have reflected that in the last few weeks. Very pleased with that.

“Iga played a really, really good match. “She put a lot of pressure on my serves. She was playing a really solid match. I think I was a little overwhelmed, maybe didn’t deal with my emotions as well as I would have liked. “I mean, Iga was just great today.”