Hungarian Winner at the Roland Garros

Hungary’s top female tennis player, Tímea Babos – paired with France’s Kristina Mladenovic – has won the women’s doubles final at the French Open tournament by beating the Chinese duo of Duan Ying Ying and Zheng Saisai 6-2, 6-3. This is the second Grand Slam title for Babos after winning the Australian Open, also in pair with Mladenovic, in January 2018. This time, as the tournament’s website puts it, the sheer quality of Mladenovic and Babos, the No.2 seeds, who combined together perfectly, was too good for Duan and Zheng.

The unseeded Chinese pair carved out a remarkable achievement – not only was this a first Grand Slam final for each of them, but they had never competed together as a duo before.

It was a more intriguing contest than the ultimate scoreline implied. At 2-1 up in the first set, the Chinese racked up three separate chances to break in a four-deuce game. However, the threat was resisted by the European duo and it was Duan’s serve that was breached for Babos and Mladenovic to take a 4-2 lead and march on to wrap up the first set, winning 89% of points on their first serve.

In the second set, Babos and Mladenovic took a 2-0 lead and although, the Frenchwoman lost her serve, the Europeans restored their two-game lead following a mighty baseline exchange between Babos and Zheng. At 5-3 up, winning the second match point earned them the title.