Polish Maja Hwalinska was crowned champion of the Chinese Wuhan Tennis Championship, on Sunday, after overcoming a set deficit to beat British Sunae Kartal 2-6, 6-4, 6-2, to win her first title in professional women’s tournaments on the tour level.
Khvalynska, who reached the final of the last edition of the Roland Garros tournament, decided the match in her favor within two hours and 43 minutes.
Hvalinska, seeded 16th in the tournament, succeeded in returning to the match after falling behind by a set and a break of serve, becoming the fourth player to win her first title in the professional women’s tournaments in the “WTA 1000” category, joining Japanese Naomi Osaka, Canadian Bianca Andreescu, and her compatriot Victoria Mpoko.
The Polish woman, who plays left-handed, caught attention in Paris, where she reached the final even though she was outside the list of the top 100 players in the world, and then qualified through the qualifiers.
The 25-year-old Polish player presented one of the most prominent surprises of the season, after she started the year ranked 146th in the world, before reaching the final of the French Open in June, as a qualifying player from the qualifiers.
Thanks to this victory, Hvalynska will advance, on Monday, to eleventh place in the world, which is the best ranking she has reached in her career.
Kartal took control of the first set, relying on strong strikes from the back line, to win it 6-2 within 45 minutes, amid difficulties faced by Khvalynska in dealing with her opponent's attacks.
But the Polish player regained her balance in the second set, and began to put pressure on Kartal’s serve by prolonging the exchanges and changing the rhythm of the game, methods that helped her overcome her compatriot Iga Szwiontek in the semi-finals. Despite Kartal leading 2-0, Hvalynska succeeded in clinching the set 6-4 after 71 minutes.
In the deciding set, Kartal's ability to keep up with her opponent declined, so Hvalynska broke her serve twice and decided the confrontation on her third chance to win the title, after two hours and 43 minutes of play.
On the other hand, Kartal failed to win the title, despite reaching its first final in the WTA 1000 tournaments, in the second tournament it played since returning to competition after a six-month absence due to a stress injury to the spine. It is expected that the Briton will return to the list of the top 50 players in the world rankings.
The Russian TASS news agency reported, citing the father of former Russian boxer Denis Boytsov, that the latter died at the age of 40.
Botsov was at one time considered a potential rival to world champion Wladimir Klitschko, before his career ended after he suffered a mysterious accident in the German capital, Berlin, in 2015.
The report stated that the death of Boetsov, who spent many years in Germany where he began his professional career, resulted from a blood clot.
Botsov was known as “Russian Tyson,” after American boxing legend Mike Tyson, and he achieved 36 victories out of 37 fights he fought, including 27 wins by knockout.
In May 2015, he was found unconscious inside a subway tunnel in Berlin. He was placed in an artificial coma and underwent emergency surgery to treat severe injuries to his head and hands.
Despite undergoing additional surgeries and a long rehabilitation period, he did not fully recover, which forced him to retire.
The exact circumstances of that accident have not yet been revealed.
It is noteworthy that Botsov was for a period in 2013 the mandatory challenger to world champion Wladimir Klitschko under the umbrella of the World Boxing Organization (WBO), before losing this classification.
The last fight he fought was in March 2015, when he defeated Brazilian boxer Irineo Beato Costa Jr., who withdrew from the fight in the second round.
