{"id":54971,"date":"2023-02-17T15:38:03","date_gmt":"2023-02-17T20:38:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/?p=54971"},"modified":"2023-02-17T15:38:03","modified_gmt":"2023-02-17T20:38:03","slug":"wta-doha-final-predictions-swiatek-pegula","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/2023\/02\/17\/wta-doha-final-predictions-swiatek-pegula\/","title":{"rendered":"WTA Doha Final Prediction: Iga Swiatek vs Jessica Pegula"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>After a very exciting week featuring a lot of incredible matches, the WTA 500 event in Doha will feature the top 2 seeds in the final, with World #1 Iga Swiatek taking on World #4 Jessica Pegula. Both players had disappointing runs at the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/australian-open\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">Australian Open<\/a> for their standards, but both have shown a very good level this week on the way to the final and Saturday should be a great final between two of the world&#8217;s top players.<\/p>\n<h2>WTA Doha Final Prediction<\/h2>\n<h4>Iga Swiatek vs Jessica Pegula<\/h4>\n<p><strong>Head-to-head:<\/strong> Swiatek 4-2 Pegula<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a final between the top two seeds and two of the top four players in the world rankings. Swiatek has been dominating the Tour for the better part of a year now and she swept all four matches against Pegula in 2022, dropping only one set in the process. It was a different story, however, earlier this year in the United Cup, with Pegula winnng 6-2 6-2, showing that maybe she might be ready for a big breakthrough this year. Winning here won&#8217;t make up for her four quarterfinal defeats in the past five Slams, but would surely give her a lot of confidence going forward to change that.<\/p>\n<p><a id=\"ImYbhJQ8TXBVZ73__OomFw\" class=\"gie-single\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/1467022318\" target=\"_blank\" style=\"color:#a7a7a7;text-decoration:none;font-weight:normal !important;border:none;display:inline-block;\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><script>window.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'ImYbhJQ8TXBVZ73__OomFw',sig:'EW6lgcAIXfyla_d0HzXn3gIxiAXtovQF0rMZIDczSDw=',w:'594px',h:'396px',items:'1467022318',caption: true ,tld:'com',is360: false })});<\/script><script src='\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js' charset='utf-8' async><\/script><\/p>\n<p>With all that said, Swiatek is the dominant #1 player for a reason. She rarely loses and when he does she tends to follow it up with long win streaks. As good as Pegula is, Swiatek is a clear favorite here, just like she is against any opponent she might face these days. After her surprising loss in Australia, she will be eager to prove it was just a clip by capturing her first title of what is likely to be a title-filled 2023 here in Doha. If she plays at or close to her best, there&#8217;s very little that Pegula can do to stop the world #1.<br \/>\n<strong>Prediction:<\/strong> Swiatek in 2<\/p>\n<p><em>Main Photo Credit: Susan Mullane USAToday<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After a very exciting week featuring a lot of incredible matches, the WTA 500 event in Doha will feature the top 2 seeds in the final, with World #1 Iga Swiatek taking on World #4 Jessica Pegula. Both players had disappointing runs at the Australian Open for their standards, but both have shown a very [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1742,"featured_media":54975,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[4315,15631,3535,15652,4704,4666,2373,2369,11020,2374,4935],"class_list":["post-54971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-predictions","tag-iga-swiatek","tag-iga-swiatek-predictions","tag-jessica-pegula","tag-jessica-pegula-predictions","tag-qatar-total-open-final-prediction","tag-qatar-total-open-predictions","tag-tennis-picks","tag-tennis-predictions","tag-wta-doha-predictions","tag-wta-picks","tag-wta-predictions"],"modified_by":"Yesh Ginsburg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1742"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54971"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54971\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}