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Top seed Emma Navarro made light work of Emiliana Arango with a crushing 6-0 6-0 victory in the final of the Merida Open.
Emma Navarro won the WTA Merida Open title (Reuters)
Top-seeded American Emma Navarro capped a dominant week with a 6-0, 6-0 thrashing of qualifier Emiliana Arango in the final of the WTA Merida Open on Sunday.
Navarro, seeded No. 1 for the first time, marched to her second WTA title without dropping a set, adding the 500-level crown to the title she won in Hobart last year.
Navarro hadn’t reached a final since, although she made it to the quarter-finals or better at the last three Grand Slams and came into the week ranked 10th in the world.
World number 10 Navarro, who won the WTA 250 Hobart International last year, needed just 55 minutes to lift her first WTA 500 trophy, wrapping up a dominant run in the tournament in which she didn’t lose a set.
Arango was riding an 11-match winning streak at all levels coming into Sunday’s final, but she was pushed to three sets in her last three matches.
With a strong serve and powerful groundstrokes, Navarro never allowed Arango to reach a break point, while the U.S. Open semi-finalist won 71 percent of points on return.
The 23-year-old became only the fifth player this century to win a WTA final with a 6-0 6-0 scoreline, and the first since Iga Swiatek’s victory over Karolina Pliskova in the 2021 Italian Open.
The other finals to feature that scoreline since the year 2000 are: 2006 Quebec City (Marion Bartoli d. Olga Puchkova), 2013 Sydney (Agnieszka Radwanska d. Dominika Cibulkova) and 2016 Bucharest (Simona Halep d. Anastasija Sevastova).
Arango, who will reach a career-high singles world ranking of 80 on Monday, could not find her stride following a nearly three-hour semi-final battle against fellow qualifier Daria Saville late on Saturday.
Arango, a 24-year-old Colombian who made it past the quarter-finals of a WTA tournament for the first time this week, came into the tournament ranked 133rd in the world and will crack the top 100 when the new rankings are announced on Monday.
The Colombian world number 133 reached Sunday’s final on the back of an 11-match winning streak, including last week’s winning run at the WTA 125 Cancun Open, but had to play three sets in each of her last three matches.
(With inputs from Agencies)
