Muguruza, 22, had won the French Open 7-5, 6-4 for her first major title.
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Spain’s Garbine Muguruza holds the trophy after winning the final of the French Open tennis tournament.
Garbine Muguruza won her first Grand Slam title at the French Open on Saturday defeating top seed and defending champion Serena Williams in the final.
With the win, Muguruza becomes the first Spanish woman to win the title since Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario did so in 1998.
“What happened?’ When he said ‘game, set, and match”, I was like, ‘No way! “You work all your life to get here”, the 22-year-old right-handed tennis ace said after beating the reigning WTA’s world No. 1.
It was for the first time that Williams, who was attempting to win her fourth French Open title, lost two successive Grand Slam finals in her career, Sport24 reported. Serena found herself in an early hole against No. 58 Bertens, who was playing in her first Grand Slam semifinal, but managed to find a way to elevated her level and defeat Bertens to reach her 27th major final.
It showed up yet again in the closing game of the match, in which Muguruza served after being unable to get any of four match points in the previous game on Williams’ serve, a five-deuce mammoth of a game that showed Williams’ great, longstanding resolve.
Muguruza saw the top-ranked Williams at the net – after all the grunting and power tennis, the quick rallies and go-for-broke shots – and she suddenly changed course.
Muguruza won all six points of 10 shots or more in that opening set and, indeed, there was no junkballing on this day. “And in moments where, you know, you could be tense, and some other players would be tense, she goes for it”, said Conchita Martinez, the only Spanish woman to win Wimbledon, in 1994, and now the captain of the country’s Davis Cup and Fed Cup teams.
Muguruza was prepared to concede double-faults – her tally ending up at nine – to keep Williams at bay on her second serve and it proved a successful tactic. Garbine Muguruza and Serena Williams pose with their trophies. The second set was much of the same for the Spaniard as she kept her cool as the second set started with three breaks with Muguruza gaining the advantage. “Hopefully next year we’ll be back”. It is marked “total grand slam wins”, and frames a debate about who to consider the greatest woman player of all time.
Her tactics paid off with Williams failing to cope with a series of explosive baseline groundstrokes. “Line judge doesn’t want to say anything”, Muguruza said.
This year’s visit to Paris hardly could have started off more inauspiciously for Muguruza: She lost the first set she played, against 38th-ranked Anna Karolina Schmiedlova. “I felt today something that I never felt before at Roland Garros, I felt the love of the crowd”, Djokovic said.
On Saturday, Serena Williams and Garbiñe Muguruza seemed to have a fair fight at the French Open.
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Despite losing her lead at 4-2, she staved off two breakpoints to serve out the first set 7-5 coming up with the big serves when needed.
