Aryna Sabalenka and Caroline Garcia will play 2022’s last final on the WTA main tour on Monday. On Sunday, Sabalenka and Garcia came through their respective semi-finals at the WTA Finals. Sabalenka took down the world no.
1 and the tournament favourite, Iga Swiatek 6-2, 2-6, 6-1 in two hours and seven minutes. This was the first time this year that the seventh-seeded Sabalenka had managed to best Swiatek, who’d won all four previous encounters they’d had.
Sabalenka won 82% and 83% of her first-serve points in the first and third sets, respectively. Swiatek won only 45% and 50% of her first-serve points across these two sets. In the second set, the Pole’s first-serve points went slightly up at 64% but it was Sabalenka who struggled to string points, winning only 40% off her first serves.
Sabalenka lost her serve only once in the first and third sets combined while conceding it twice in the second set. Swiatek, meanwhile, lost her serve a total of six times in the match – thrice in the first set, once in the second set and then twice in the final set.
WTA Finals: Aryna Sabalenka vs Caroline Garcia, Part 2 in 2022
Following her win, Sabalenka said, “Overall, I was really calm on the court. The mindset was just I wanted to make her work for it. I didn’t want to give her another easy win, like she got (in the) first three wins.
That’s the mindset I had during this match. I think that’s why I wasn’t really going for all those winners, all those aces, but I think because of the mindset, I made it a lot”. In the other semi-final, sixth-seeded Caroline Garcia posted a 6-3, 6-2 win against Maria Sakkari in an hour and 15 minutes.
Going into the semi-final, Sakkari like Swiatek had won all three of the round-robin matches she’d played, posting an undefeated record of three wins and zero losses to enter the semis. Garcia, on the other hand, had needed over two hours to get through against Daria Kasatkina in their make-or-break round-robin match-up.
The semi-final, however, was one-sided as the Frenchwoman won 76% of her first-serve points to the fifth-seeded Greek’s 56%. Garcia also saved two of the three break points she faced while converting four of the five break points she had on Sakkari’s serve.
Caroline Garcia’s the third French player to make it to the WTA Finals’ final. The other two French players were Mary Pierce and Amelie Mauresmo. Pierce and Mauresmo had a French derby in the 2005 WTA Finals’ final.
This will also be Garcia’s fifth meeting against Aryna Sabalenka. Both players have won two matches each but Garcia defeated Sabalenka when they faced each other in the semis of the 2022 Cincinnati Open, en route to her title there.