Winning her two biggest titles to date and eleven matches in a row, Caroline Garcia has had a damn good fortnight! The Frenchwoman defeated soon-to-be crowned world number one, Simona Halep in Sunday’s Beijing final. Garcia won, 6-4 7-6(3) in one hour and 52 minutes.
Garcia once again demonstrated her mental fortitude in a marathon seventh game of the second set where she saved nine (!) break points to hold. Halep will want a few of those opportunities back, particularly where she failed to put a return back in court, but Garcia delivered the goods. The Frenchwoman is riding a huge wave of momentum and battled through the second set tiebreak to win her first Premier Mandatory title.
Highlights of the final by the WTA can be found at the link below.
A reminder of the latest WTA Insider podcast with Simona Halep which I listened to this morning. I did laugh when Halep remarked that after the Sharapova match at the US Open, Darren (her coach) had told her that her serve was s*** 😂. Halep’s first serve percentage was down in the first set of this final, but otherwise she served extremely well all week in Beijing.
By virtue of winning Beijing, Garcia has moved above Johanna Konta into the eighth and final spot for Singapore. Based on their respective forms, I think Garcia’s got it. I’m disappointed for Konta who has been top eight for most of the year although she has been really struggling of late. The Brit pulled out of Hong Kong with a foot injury.
Caroline Garcia is the number one seed in Tianjin where she is set to play Maria Sharapova in the first round. I’d be surprised if she plays next week having had three very busy weeks.
Martina Hingis and Chan Yung-Jan just keep on winning.
The main draw for Hong Kong is an absolute cracker with five of the world’s top 20. I’ve ended up with a Svitolina-Radwanska final in my Draw Challenge.
The main draw for Linz is out including wild cards for Belinda Bencic and Anna-Lena Friedsam. This is one of the weaker draws I can remember for Linz with no top 25 players. I’ve ended up with a Giorgi-Strycova final on my Draw Challenge.
This was a lovely feature on Monica and Puerto Rico.
And finally, I spent most of my day making a raspberry trifle terrine. It didn’t entirely go to plan and was supposed to have another layer, but happy with how it looked in the end!
https://www.instagram.com/p/BZ_xk6OFLKd/?hl=en&taken-by=mootennis
Moo's Tennis Blog 
I’m surprised that Svitolina asked for a wild card at Hong Kong… She must be really gunning for that year end #1 ranking. I personally really rate her chances at doing well in Singapore anyway, since she has solid records against all the women who have qualified bar Ostapenko.
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I was surprised that Svitolina skipped Wuhan – not sure if it was an injury?
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I think she just really fancied her chances at winning Beijing. I had her as my winner and I think had she beaten Garcia then she’d have done it.
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Garcia was always very talented, nice and down-to-earth. Once she improved mentally you just could love to seeing her play this well. 🙂
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Amazing result from Caroline; she as good as admitted she was really tired during the match but you wouldn’t have thought so from the way she played today. I agree that Simona’s going to rue all those break points though (nine!).
She had a few words to say about Jo Konta’s fading chances of qualifying for Singapore, in “Champion’s Corner”;
“Actually, in Tokyo I was speaking with Jo Konta. We were just – not joking about it – but she was pretty safe to be in. After we said, do you remember last year, Kuznetsova had to win and it was a really last minute change and everything? And the only chance [this year] was for someone to win Wuhan and Beijing (laughs).
I’m so sorry for her. No one would believe someone No.19 in the world would win Wuhan and Beijing in the row, right? We changed all the prognostications for the last spot. It’s tennis. We know everything can change fast.”
http://www.wtatennis.com/news/champions-corner-garcia-hungry-more-after-beijing-triumph
I agree with James; I think the it’s in the bag for Caroline now, Jo’s just got too much to do now to make up the deficit.
I also feel sorry for Jo but unless she raises her game over the next couple of weeks, she’d be eliminated early in Singapore anyway when she got there, whereas on recent form I think Caroline’s at least got a chance of winning the whole thing if and when she qualifies.
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Its HILARIOUS that Konta may just miss out again in such extreme circumstances. Last year they had to Photoshop her out of the promotional posters…
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Although mightily impressed by your cakes to date, I’d like to see some tennis-themed cake creations. You may even get a Twitter reply from a player or two. Who knows, one may even ask you to make one for them.
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Ha thanks, David. A few years ago I made a tennis cake which was a big fruit cake covered with a tennis court in icing. It took me about two days! I’ll try and do another tennis themed bake soon 🙂
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Jo’s been busy on the cake front ( not a tennis-themed creation though);
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I saw this!
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BTW, I posted something earlier – twice – but it didn’t get through. It’s a problem I’ve had in the past too (maybe it’s the cache on my browser or something).
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Now accepted, Graham. I would guess that it is the link you added in your comment. Sometimes it goes into my spam folder. Please just let me know if it happens again and I can accept!
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Haha … no pressure, just make it memorable when it happens!
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Ha i’ll try!
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Konta and Garcia H2H in Moscow for the final spot in Singapore——probably won’t happen.
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I think Jo needs to reach the final in Moscow to stand a chance now.
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Yup that’s correct. Personally, I really feel for Jo. Moscow will be a tough draw.
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To win back-to-back premier titles in China required a lot of energy and strengths. I am not sure if someone has consumed PED in this aspect.
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Why say it then, especially when she admitted she was tired after the match? Jeez, talk about raining on someone’s parade.
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Would have been more surprising if she had done this at the start of the season, being able to pick apart your competition at the tail end of the season is within reason. More so in an open tour.
Most of her criticisms earlier were not issues of physical toughness or conditioning it was mainly to do with mental inconsistency. Once she’s been able to improve on that you will see results like this. She is a base line hitter after all. Plus, you can still see the signs of wear and tear on her body.
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Sharapova vs Garcia cancelled in Tianjin.
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