Sorana Cirstea will face Alison Van Uytvanck in the championship match of the 2019 Tashkent Open. But who will prevail?
Tashkent Open Final
Alison Van Uytvanck vs Sorana Cirstea
Head-to-head: Cirstea 2-0 Van Uytvanck
Van Uytvanck will look for her fourth WTA title on Saturday. All the previous tournaments she won were played indoors, including the Hungarian Ladies Open in Budapest earlier this year. The Belgian plays a very flat, hard ball and therefore lacks any real consistency in her shots and her results. She had played five hard court tournaments post-Wimbledon and only won three matches before the Tashkent Open.
But the tournament in the Uzbek capital has been one of the instances where everything works out for her. She lost just four games combined against her first two opponents, Ludmilla Samsonova and Monica Niculescu. In the quarterfinals, the Belgian dismantled Pauline Parmentier 6-2 6-4. Her toughest test came in the last four, where she played Kristyna Pliskova and was close to choking away the second set, wasting a match point at 5-3 and getting broken in the next game. But she recovered to close out a 6-3 7-5 win and has spent only five hours on the court coming into the final.
Cirstea, meanwhile, has never quite managed to live up to her potential despite a solid career. The Romanian reached Roland Garros quarterfinals in 2009 and many had high hopes for her, but it never quite came together for the 29-year-old. She did, however, win the Tashkent Open eleven years ago, her only WTA title. This final is her first since she lost the championship match at the Rogers Cup to Serena Williams in 2013.
The Romanian decided to look for points post-Wimbledon on clay, but it didn’t work out too well as she lost her opening match in three consecutive tournaments. But she reached the third round at the US Open, losing to Taylor Townsend), before beginning her Asian swing campaign with a loss in Hiroshima to Sara Sorribes Tormo. Cirstea didn’t face a single top 100 opponent on the way to the final, knocking out Denisa Allertova, Ysaline Bonaventure, Danka Kovinic and Katarina Zavatska. She had to fight back from 0-3 in the deciding set against Bonaventure, but has improved as the tournament has progressed. Her semifinal match only took 75 minutes and she lost only ten points in the first set.
The Romanian took both their previous meetings, which came in New Haven in 2014 and Linz two years ago, with Van Uytvanck failing to take a set on either occasion. But the women are now in very different moments of their careers. The Belgian faced much sterner opposition on her way to the final and should be able to dominate play with her risky, flat shots. Having passed the test of uncomfortable baseliners like Niculescu, Cirstea’s shouldn’t prove too great an obstacle. You can’t negate the Romanian’s talent, but her way to the final was fairly simple and Van Uytvanck will be a huge step up in level. Do not expect her to make it successfully.
Prediction: Van Uytvanck in 2
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