World No 1 Ashleigh Barty of Australia continued her stellar season, notching her tour-leading fifth WTA singles title of the year by claiming the Western & Southern Open trophy for the first time yesterday.
Barty ended the giant-killing run of World No.76 Jil Teichmann of Switzerland, 6-3, 6-1, to collect her 13th career WTA singles title. With the victory, top-ranked Barty becomes the first player to hit 40 match-wins this season.
In an hour and 13 minutes of play, Barty carved past the wildcard, handing Teichmann her first loss to a player against the Top 10 this season. Teichmann had been 4-0 against that group in 2021 before falling to Barty.
However, despite the loss, Teichmann has had an outstanding run through the event, knocking out Top 5 players Naomi Osaka and Karolina Pliskova and Olympic champion Belinda Bencic en route to the final. For the gross majority of the clash, Barty was impenetrable on serve. The top seed slammed eight aces and won 85 percent of points behind her first service. Barty broke serve five times and was only broken once, at the very end of the encounter.
After coming close to an early break at 1-0, Barty took the lead for good at 4-3 in the opening set, drawing netted errors from Teichmann to move ahead 5-3. After a double fault in the next game, Barty won an outrageous rally with a passing winner to lead 30-15, and she wrapped up the one-set lead from there with two stellar serves.
Barty reeled off eight straight games to lead 5-0 before Teichmann mounted a brief comeback, breaking Barty for the first time when the Aussie served for the match. But Barty quickly regrouped, setting up match point with a forehand off of a Teichmann dropshot, then converting her first chance after a Teichmann forehand flew long.