admin Australian Open champion Elena Rybakina picked up her second title of the year as she outclassed Karolina Muchova 7-5, 6-1 to win the WTA Stuttgart indoor clay-court tournament on Sunday.
Top seed Rybakina, 26, snatched a tight opening set with two breaks against her seventh-seeded Czech opponent after 53 minutes on court in Germany.
The Kazakh never looked back in the second set rushing to a 5-0 lead as Muchova struggled with her serve, sealing victory and the 13th title of her career after 1hr 18 min.
Rybakina, who finished runner-up at Indian Wells last month, regained the title she won two years ago and drives off with a second Porsche sports car — the coveted prize awarded to the champion in Stuttgart.
Elena Rybakina returns a shot. AP
“I was trying to read her serve, and in the beginning everything worked,” Rybakina said.
“Then she started to serve a bit better, harder, and even knowing where the ball is coming and it was kind of on the racquet, but I was missing the shots. So it went pretty tight in the first set.
“In the second, I was just trying to be more solid. I think the return improved. I was managing to see where she was gonna serve.”
Meanwhile, second seed Ben Shelton won the ATP 500 clay-court tournament in Munich for the first time wth a 6-2, 7-5 victory over the Italian Flavio Cobolli who had such an impressive win over Alexander Zverev in the semis.
Czech Republic’s Karolina Muchova returns a shot to Kazakhstan’s Elena Rybakina. AP
One year after losing in the final to Zverev, world No. 6 Shelton claimed the fifth ATP title of his career and his second of the season after Dallas, on hard court.
“I came out at a really high level and have done that before against him,” said Shelton after the match.
“The toughest thing is maintaining it as he raises his level. I managed to do that in the second set and played some great tennis.
“I am happy with my performance this week. I got better and better as the week went on and I am happy with the work me and the team put in.”
Shelton, who won an ATP 250-level clay-court tournament clay in Houston in 2024, also became the first American man since Andre Agassi at the Rome Masters 1000 in 2002 to win a tournament on the surface at a higher level.
“I have big ambitions for the clay courts,” Shelton added. “It is a surface I want to get better on each year. It is slowly becoming one of my favourite surfaces to play on.”
Elena Rybakina (right) is congratulated by Karolina Muchova. AFP
Shelton had a comfortable ride against opponents outside the world’s top 30 until the final although world no. 16 Cobolli was unable to reproduce the performance which did for Zverev.
The American cruised through the first set, breaking his opponent’s first two service games, even though Cobolli saved eight set points – six of them on his own serve – before finally yielding on the ninth.
The second set was much more tightly contested as it went with serve up to 5-5.
But a double fault from Cobolli handed Shelton a break at the perfect moment, and he made no mistake in closing it out after 1 hour 31 minutes.
Agence France-Presse
