Simona Halep has been crowned the winner of the Italian Open in Rome on Monday after defending champion Karolina Pliskova retired through injury while she was 6-0 2-1 down.
The Romanian despite a hard fall in the second game, was very disciplined and most certainly at her best while Pliskova looked really slow with her on-court movement, failing to hit a single winner in 20 minutes.
Pliskova also received treatment on her lower back and leg after Halep won the opening set.
Fans were allowed into Foro Italico’s centre court for the match up and they urged Pliskova to make it a contest.
They applauded the rare points she got on the scoreboard, and it seemed to work as the pair broke each other as the second set started.
However, Pliskova retires, as she was clearly struggling with an injury, to give Halep her first title in Rome.
Watch the match highlights below
“I know that’s not the way how Karolina wanted to finish the tournament and the final,” Halep says at the trophy presentation ceremony. “Good luck in the French Open, hopefully, we will meet again there in the final.
“Finally, after two finals I could win this title. I love this tournament and I’m really happy that I have this beautiful trophy in my hands now,” she adds, having lost the final in 2017 and 2018.
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The win ensured that Simona Halep extended her winning streak to 14 matches and also earned the Romanian her third consecutive title of the year after winning in Dubai before the COVID-19 hiatus and then in Prague last month.
She is poised to be one of the firm favourites at Roland Garros with world No 1 Ashleigh Barty and US Open champion Naomi Osaka both skipping the tournament this year.
Pliskova, on the other hand, hopes to be ready in time for the French Open, which starts next week, after feeling the niggle since her quarter-final victory over Elise Mertens.
“I have to see the doctor to see that it’s nothing,” she said. “I really want to be 100 percent ready because if I want to go far in a Grand Slam, that’s two weeks of tennis.
“I felt it from the match with Mertens and it was growing every day. This morning I felt it was not really good and I was thinking if I should even play, but you still want to go and try even though it didn’t look really good.”
