Kovinic bounces back into the Top 100 after W100 Wiesbaden triumph
Danka Kovinic won her first title in two and a half years – and fourth at W100 level on the ITF World Tennis Tour – after triumphing on German clay at W100 Wiesbaden on Sunday.
The 27-year-old Montenegrin overcame 18-year-old local Nastaja Schunk 6-3 7-6(0) in the final to claim the 13th ITF singles title of her career and move back into the Top 100 after an injury-affected season.
Kovinic, a former world No. 46, recorded her best Grand Slam performance during a run to the third round at January’s Australian Open, defeating US Open champion Emma Raducanu in the process, but has been short on matches since then and dropped out of the Top 100 in April.
She slipped 49 places in the WTA rankings last month after losing the points from her run to the final at the 2021 WTA event in Charleston but bounced back on her favoured clay in Wiesbaden.
Wins over Donna Vekic, Mandy Minella, Eva Lys and Justina Mikulskyte preceded her straight-sets win over Schunk, a former junior world No. 15 and last year’s girls’ singles runner-up at Wimbledon.
Kovinic was broken early in each set in the title match but held her nerve to deny the German in the teenager's biggest final of her career so far. So how did she keep calm as the talented youngster threatened to spring an upset?
“I don’t know, I guess many years and many hours on court,” said Kovinic. “She’s very young and she kept composed during the whole match. She played really well.”
Kovinic’s triumph was her first title since she won the W100 Szekesfehervar tournament in Hungary – one of her four victories at that level of competition along with W100 Trnava in 2015 and W100 Marseille in 2016.
Kovinic, who will have an eye on improving her second-round best at Roland Garros later this month, has won all 13 of her professional singles titles on clay.
Meanwhile, qualifier Gabriela Lee won the other W100 title on offer on the ITF World Tennis Tour last week, claiming the fifth title of her career - and first above W25 level – at W100 Bonita Springs in Florida.
The 26-year-old Romanian benefited from two retirements – from CoCo Vandeweghe in the first round and Katie Volynets in the semi-finals – before overcoming Katarzyna Kawa for her first title since September 2019. As a result, Lee leapt 84 places in the WTA rankings to a career-high No. 150 this week.
There were also wins at W60 level for Poland’s Maja Chwalinska and Liechtenstein’s Kathinka von Deichmann.
Chwalinska, 20, collected her fifth ITF singles crown and the joint-best win of her career at W60 Prague, where she defeated Ekaterine Gorgodze in the final to add to her W60 Warsaw triumph in 2019.
Von Deichmann, meanwhile, won the biggest title of her career at W60 Koper in Slovenia, defeating Spaniard Andrea Lazaro Garcia 3-6 6-3 6-2 in the title match.
Von Deichmann, who has also reached four W60 semi-finals this year, leads the ITF World Tennis Tour in 2022 for the most match-wins at the W60-W80-W100 level with 22, ahead of China’s Wang Xiyu (19) and American Katie Volynets (16).
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