Match Recap, Cincinnati Final: Williams d. Ivanovic, 6-4 6-1

 

2014_08_13  W&S Tennis Wednesday Serena Williams-2

Serena Williams won her fifth title of the year with a 6-4 6-1 victory over Ana Ivanovic in the final of Cincinnati.  Somewhat surprisingly, this is Serena’s first ever Cincy title.  The match started promisingly in terms of being a contest with Ivanovic racing out into an early lead; however serving at *4-5 in the first set, Ivanovic threw in a shocking service game, which she finished with two consecutive double faults.  Ivanovic had started very strongly, demonstrating her ability over many others at returning the Serena serve.  Serena started much sharper than she did against Caroline Wozniacki in the semi-finals despite going down an early break and after saving three break points at *1-3, she motored through the rest of the match, winning 11 of the next 13 games.

This was probably Serena’s cleanest performance of the last few weeks.  She served extremely well and finished with 26 winners and 13 unforced errors, which was very impressive based on some of the statistics we have seen from Cincy this week.  It’s been an exhausting schedule for the world number one, who has played Stanford-Montreal-Cincy in three consecutive weeks.  She comes away with two titles, the US Open series and the tag of US Open favourite.  I’m still not 100% convinced though.  It’s going to be another fascinating Slam for the women.  Although she was brilliant in this final, Serena didn’t face much opposition from Ivanovic in the second set, who had fought for two hours and 46 minutes in a crazy semi-final with Maria Sharapova.  By virtue of her performances this week, Ivanovic will be a top eight seed at the US Open, which is pretty big.

This has been another great week of tennis in Cincy.  Many thanks to Omar Boraby for providing Moo’s Tennis Blog with photos from Cincy.  I’ll be posting a selection of Omar’s best shots in the next few days along with a special feature post on Lucie Safarova… something a little bit different 😉

Photo used in this post taken by Omar Boraby

One thought on “Match Recap, Cincinnati Final: Williams d. Ivanovic, 6-4 6-1

  1. In my opinion Sharapova vs. Halep was like a final. It had too much tension, pride and finally tears and shouts of joy. And what followed also confirm what I say.

    A man serving lunch at a restaurant with someone. Also served and an olive. One of them try, but fail not to sting with a fork. He still try five minutes but the olive always running in the opposite direction. At one time, lunch partner is offering to help him catch the olive. He said do not do so but so, and shows how … Suddenly he took the olive to fork prick. Then the other man said thoughtfully: Well, sure you’ve got it easy, after I tired it myself!

    With all due respect but Serena had an easy task in final.

    Like

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.