Caroline Garcia continued her hot summer with a stellar 6-2, 6-4 victory over Petra Kvitova to win the Western & Southern Open final at Mason, Ohio.
Garcia racked up 11 aces in beating Kvitova in one hour and 42 minutes for her third title in less than three months. It is her 10th career WTA title.
The Frenchwoman converted 82 percent of her first-serve points while winning her first 1000-level tournament since 2017. Garcia also became the first qualifier to win a 1000-level event.
“It’s hard to believe I am standing her today,” Garcia said during the trophy presentation. “It’s been such a week.”
Garcia advanced into the main draw of the Cincinnati-area event through qualifying and knocked off three players ranked in the top 10 — No. 4 Maria Sakkari of Greece in the second round, No. 8 Jessica Pegula in the quarterfinals and No. 6 Aryna Sabalenka in the semis.
Garcia also prevented Kvitova from winning her 30th career title.
Kvitova, from the Czech Republic, had two aces and failed to convert any of her eight break points while playing in her 40th career final.
It was the first time Kvitova reached the Western & Southern Open title match. She was a semifinalist in 2012 and 2018.
“It was a beautiful week for me,” Kvitova said during the ceremony. “… Finally I made a final here. I was working really hard for the bigger trophy but congrats to Caroline.”
Garcia, once ranked as high as No. 4 in the world, has won 27 matches since the start of June, including titles in Bad Homburg and Warsaw. She is forecasted to rise to No. 17 in the WTA rankings on Monday.
Garcia was ranked as low as No. 79 on June 1. She said a foot injury derailed the early part of her season.
“At the beginning of the year, if you told me these couple of months would happen I would tell you I’m not too sure of that,” Garcia told the Tennis Channel.
Garcia also drew motivation from people who were writing her off.
“You feel judged without people knowing what was going on on the other side, on the tennis courts,” Garcia said. “And a lot of people will judge you very quickly and say that you are a loser and don’t train hard enough. That you’re not good enough. And what you did in the past, they forgot about it.
“Sometimes it can be very painful and obviously when you’re back, you don’t want to say it is revenge, but you take all the bad comments as motivation and you just do your thing the best you can.”
Now something much different is happening — Garcia is being mentioned as somebody who can make a deep run at the U.S. Open, which starts Aug. 29 in New York.
“Yeah, now I’m a superstar and I’m favored to win the U.S. Open,” Garcia said, poking fun at how fast the narrative changed. “A few months back, I was nothing.”
–Field Level Media
