The stage is set for what promises to be an entertaining final at the WTA Berlin Open with the second WTA 500 title of this year’s grass-court swing will be on the line when former Wimbledon champion Marketa Vondrousova faces first-time WTA finalist Wang Xinyu. Both players will no doubt be desperate to maintain their momentum with Wimbledon on the horizon, but who will lift the title in Germany’s capital?<\/p>\n
Head-to-head:<\/strong> first meeting<\/p>\n A tournament that started with one of the strongest fields this season will have two unexpected finalists competing for the title. Marketa Vondrousova earned her first win over a world #1 by dispatching Aryna Sabalenka in straight sets in Saturday’s semifinal. The Czech, who won the first set 6-2 in under 40 minutes, recovered from a break down in the second set to prevail in straight sets – 6-2 6-4. Remarkably, this will be her first final at any level since that historic Wimbledon success<\/a> two summers ago and might just put the rest of the field on notice in SW19.<\/p>\n Wang Xinyu surged through the draw right from qualifying, beating two-time Wimbledon finalist Ons Jabeur en route to the main draw, and then upsetting Daria Kasatkina, newly crowned French Open champion Coco Gauff and 2021 Berlin champion Liudmila Samsonova in the main draw. This will be her first Tour-level final. Wang will equal her career-high ranking of world #32 on Monday and can make her Top 30 debut if she wins the title.<\/p>\n This should be a compelling clash between two players who have exceeded expectations this week. Wang has certainly shown she can handle her nerves against the big names and is playing with a good margin off the ground. She’s been taking early cuts off second serves and is super aggressive from the baseline. With Vondrousova, timing is extremely vital both in plan and execution and the Czech might not get that luxury here if Wang is able to fire winners at will. Vondrousova, who has proven her grass-court savvy and has been in this stage many times in the past, may well have the advantage but Wang will likely keep this close.<\/p>\n Prediction: Vondrousova in 3<\/em><\/p>\n Main photo credit: Geoff Burke-USA TODAY Sports<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The stage is set for what promises to be an entertaining final at the WTA Berlin Open with the second WTA 500 title of this year’s grass-court swing will be on the line when former Wimbledon champion Marketa Vondrousova faces first-time WTA finalist Wang Xinyu. Both players will no doubt be desperate to maintain their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2341,"featured_media":85582,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_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":[884,15567,2373,2369,17678,17679],"class_list":["post-85575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-predictions","tag-marketa-vondrousova","tag-marketa-vondrousova-predictions","tag-tennis-picks","tag-tennis-predictions","tag-wang-xinyu","tag-wang-xinyu-predictions"],"modified_by":"Jim Smith","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85575","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\/2341"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85575"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85575\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":85583,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85575\/revisions\/85583"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}