Emma Navarro registered a double-bagel win in the Merida final and became the first player since – you probably guessed it correctly – Iga Swiatek to win a final with a 6-0 6-0 scoreline.
Playing in her first WTA 500 final, the eighth-ranked American delivered a clinical performance to demolish Emiliana Arango 6-0 6-0, who entered the final riding an 11-match winning streak.
Since the start of the 21st century, only five players have managed to do so.
Before Navarro, the last to do it was Swiatek, who destroyed Karolina Pliskova 6-0 6-0 in her first WTA 1000 final in Rome in 2021 May.
Since then, the Pole has become very well-known for handing out bagels (6-0) or breadsticks (6-1) to rivals.
Swiatek claimed she wasn’t even aware of the scoreline after crushing Pliskova
After absolutely annihilating the Czech former world No. 1 in the Rome final, the Pole – who was 19 at the time – insisted that she was so focused on the actual tennis that she didn’t know that she completed a double-bagel until her coach told her.
“When my coach told me it was 6-0, 6-0, I was, like, Really? Isn’t that a mistake?” she said after the match.
“When I was on the breaks, I was visualizing that I’m starting that match from the beginning every time. Actually, I did that so well that I didn’t even know that it was 6-0 in the first set…
“The key is just to not to think about it and just, you know, play. Because when you’re gonna think about the score, you can actually ruin your mindset and ruin your attitude.”
Over the last couple of years, Swiatek repeated several times that she doesn’t enter matches wanting to embarrass someone but she is just so locked in and plays with the same intensity from the start to finish.
So far this year, the five-time Grand Slam champion has had three wins in which she dropped only one game.
Tennis World USA