Spain’s Garbine Muguruza holds the trophy after winning the final of the French Open tennis tournament.
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Muguruza, interestingly, is only the second player born in the 1990s – after Petra Kvitova – to win a Grand Slam.
Williams said Muguruza was simply too good for her on Saturday. “Every time they were playing, those girls, they really (wanted) to win”.
This is the first time in Williams’ career she has lost back-to-back Grand Slam finals.This year’s visit to Paris hardly could have started off more inauspiciously for Muguruza: She lost the very first set she played in the tournament, against 38th-ranked Anna Karolina Schmiedlova. Not because I didn’t think she was able to do it but more because what I saw during the match was a lot of tension on her side.
That’s what the younger Williams has done for years.
Williams, who was aiming to equal Steffi Graf’s professional-era record of 22 majors, was the favourite to win her third Paris title in four years but she fell one win short of the target – just as she had done at the Australian Open in January.
Since Angelique Kerber upset Williams at the Australian Open in January, the German has had a hard time maintaining her consistency, and almost two weeks ago she was bundled out of this event in the first round.
Last year Wimbledon was her major final debut, and this year she won a Grand Slam for the first time – both against Williams.
More huge hitting helped her into a 3-1 lead, and Graf’s record was starting to look safe for another day.
“I thought about it”.
“I knew, “Come on, Garbine”.
“When you see people that are winning and there’s new faces, it makes you think like, ‘I can be one of those faces”.
There is no doubt that she is.
According to the official website of the WTA, the win also improves the 2015 Wimbledon women’s singles runner-up’s current world rankings from No. 4 to second-best in the world.
She did not look as listless as she had 24 hours earlier, but when she surrendered her serve to Muguruza in the fifth game by firing three backhand errors and a double fault, the signs looked ominous. Write her off. Go ahead.
Williams saved four match points in the next game to stay alive, but Muguruza stayed calm to serve out for the biggest win of her fledgling career, clinching it with a lob that landed smack on the baseline. “Hopefully she will be again in a position to be in finals and win another big title, because honestly this is awesome”.
Last year, when she collected a sixth Wimbledon, it allowed her to celebrate a second “Serena Slam” of all four majors at the same time.
“That’s for sure”, said Patrick Mouratoglou, Williams’ coach. Muguruza is by far the youngest current Grand Slam victor, with Petra Kvitova (at 26) being the second youngest. She continues to be challenged by a slew of rising stars in the women’s game.
Muguruza’s coach Sam Sumyk was also refusing to write off the American.
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“No, no, no, no, no, no, no”. It showed up again in the next game, a long Muguruza service game that featured three set points. “She is a fantastic player, and we need her”.
