Taiwan Open: Timea Babos defeats Kateryna Kozlova in final to win third WTA singles title of her career

Taipei: Hungary’s Timea Babos triumphed over Kateryna Kozlova of Ukraine to win the Taiwan Open on Sunday, her second title of 2018 after claiming the doubles trophy at the Australian Open in Melbourne last month. The Hungarian fourth seed carried over the momentum from the Australian Open to win in straight sets, 7-5, 6-1 in an hour and 25 minutes. [caption id=“attachment_4335161” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Timea Babos with the Taiwan Open trophy. Image courtesy: Facebook/@wtatwopen[/caption] It was her third WTA singles title after winning the Abierto GNP Seguros in Monterrey in 2012 and the Hungarian Ladies Open in Budapest last year. Kozlova was making her debut at a WTA final. She stayed close in the first set but conceded an easy victory in the second. The Ukrainian, ranked 85th in the world, had beaten Babos in their last encounter at the 2015 Qatar Total Open in Doha. She had earlier knocked out fifth seed Yulia Putintseva of Kazakhstan and former Wimbledon finalist Sabine Lisicki of Germany in the semi-final before facing Babos. Babos had travelled to Chinese Taipei after a successful Australian Open, where she won the women’s doubles with Kristina Mladenovic, and finished runner-up in the mixed doubles with Rohan Bopanna. “It’s been an amazing five-and-a-half weeks,” WTA.com quoted Babos as saying after her match. “Starting with a quarter-final (at the Shenzhen Open), winning my first Slam in doubles, beating a Top 10 player in singles (CoCo Vandeweghe in the first round of the Australian Open), and here winning another title in singles, it’s been amazing. “So far this season, in all my matches I’ve played, I’ve played good, I fought hard, and this is what happened all week here,” Babos added. “I had some difficult moments — every single match brought some difficult moments. But I was able to stay there and to manage them, and this was the key for this week.” With the Taiwan Open title, Babos will climb 10 spots in the WTA rankings to 35. With inputs from AFP