SINGAPORE – World number six Caroline Wozniacki posted her first win over Elina Svitolina in grand style with a straight-sets thrashing in the WTA Finals on Monday.
Denmark’s Wozniacki had previously lost all three matches to Svitolina, including crushing finals losses in Dubai and Toronto this year, but overcame her nemesis with a 6-2 6-0 destruction in just 59 minutes.
Opening her WTA Finals campaign, Wozniacki won 10 straight games to continue a trend of one-sided matches at the Singapore Indoor Stadium.
Players with previous experience on the slower court in Singapore have won all four matches during the opening two nights.
Wozniacki, who played in Singapore in 2014, completely overwhelmed the Ukrainian in a perfect start in her bid to regain the world’s number one ranking after a five-year drought.
The 27-year-old is one of seven players in the tournament in the running for the prized top ranking.
The lopsided result seemed unlikely in the early going, with both players slugging from the baseline in almost identical fashion.
But Wozniacki started finding her range to peel off winners and she claimed a decisive break in the sixth game.
She closed out the first set by breaking Svitolina, whose error-riddled performance delivered eight unforced errors in the opening set.
Conversely, Wozniacki had 11 winners and just five unforced errors in a dominant first set.
Svitolina had a chance to get back into the contest with a break point to start the second set, but Wozniacki held on and subsequently broke.
She broke two more times to storm through the set in just 26 minutes.
"I've been working on my serve for 20 years now so I'm glad it's finally starting to click" - @CaroWozniacki😂 #WTAFinals pic.twitter.com/F71tbYJCVG
— WTA (@WTA) October 23, 2017
Meanwhile, Simona Halep says she is relishing being the world number one after delivering an ominous warning to her rivals at the WTA Finals with a crushing, straight-sets victory over the in-form Caroline Garcia.
In her opening round-robin match at the eight-player season finale, Halep halted Garcia’s 11-match winning streak with a 6-4 6-2 masterclass in 88 minutes.
It was sweet revenge for the recently crowned world number one from Romania, who lost to France’s Garcia in this month’s China Open final in Beijing.
Halep, who received the top billing a day before the final in Beijing, said she enjoyed winning her first match as the world number one.
“I feel happy. I feel great winning the first match in the first tournament coming in as number one,” she told reporters after the match.
“It’s a nice thing that I can be number one at the end of the year, but it is not the most important thing in this moment for me. I just want to win the matches that I’m playing here.”