Belinda Bencic survived the brink of defeat against a player she had yet to beat when she was in action at the 2023 Abu Dhabi Open.
The second seed secured three match point opportunities in the second set tiebreak before beating eighth seed Liudmila Samsonova 1-6, 7-6, 6-4 in the final of the Abu Dhabi Open which lasted 2 hours 48 minutes. Thanks to this win, he managed to claim his second title of the season as well as the eighth title of his career.
“It was a really tight match and I feel happy that I was able to turn things around,” said Belinda Bencic. “I’m just trying to stay in there, fighting for every point and just do my best.”
“I feel really happy to be going home with the title in this tournament and I think I had some good matches, but also tough ones. I proved to myself that I can really fight hard, stay in the game and somehow turn things around.”
READ ALSO : Novak Djokovic Still Motivated With Rivalry Against Rafael Nadal
The world number 9 now outperforms other female players this season by bagging 12 wins. She surpassed the 2023 Australian Open champion, Aryna Sabalenka, who won the first 11 matches of the 2023 season.
The Swiss also joins Sabalenka as the women’s tennis player who has bagged two titles this season. Prior to winning the Abu Dhabi Open title, she also won the Adelaide International title 2 months ago.
To make that happen, the second seed claimed her first victory over Samsonova in four attempts.
Samsonova beat Olympic champion Tokyo in Berlin in 2021 to win her first career title and she claimed two other wins over the Swiss in the same season, in Luxemburg and the Billie Jean King Cup Finals.
Thanks to this victory, not only did the world number 9 claim her first win over Samsonova but she also ended the world number 19’s unbeaten streak in the final at 4-0.
Samsonova played flawlessly in the first set by shooting 16 winners and making five unforced errors. But Belinda Bencic struggled in the second set before going into the tiebreaker. The world number 19 created match point opportunities at 6/4, 6/5 and 8/7, but the Swiss saved all of them before forcing a mistake and converting her second set point when her opponent hit the net with a backhand return.
In the third set, Bencic again forced the world number 19 into errors to claim the decisive break at 3-2 before going on to emerge victorious.
