Putintseva Wins Hungarian Grand Prix

Top seed Yulia Putintseva of Kazakhstan won the singles title at the USD 235,000 WTA Hungarian Grand Prix women's clay court tennis tournament in Budapest, as she easily defeated Ukraine's Anhelina Kalinina in Sunday's final. The doubles title of the tournament went to the Hungarian-Romanian duo of Fanny Stollár and Mihaela Buzarnescu.

The Római Tennis Academy in Budapest was the venue of an international tournament between 1996 and 2013 as part of the series organized by the Florida-based Women’s Tennis Association (WTA). For economic and administrative reasons, Jenő Márky, the owner of this WTA sanction had to organize the event outside the country (in the Romanian capital, Bucharest) for the coming years. By 2021, he managed to bring the tournament back to the Római Tennis Academy he owns.

In two easy sets
26-year-old Kazakh Putintseva, who was born in Moscow and lives in Florida, is ranked 42nd in the world, was the clear favorite to win the final at the Asbóth József Stadium at the Római Tennis Academy. Her only previous WTA trophy was won in 2019 in Nuremberg, also on clay. Her 24-year-old Ukrainian opponent, Anhelina Kalinina who is career-high 95th in the WTA rankings, had her greatest achievement so far this year by qualifying for the second round of Roland Garros by beating three-time Grand Slam champion Angelique Kerber of Germany.
Putintseva – who changed citizenship from Russian to Kazakh in 2012 – went up 3:0 early in the first set by breaking her opponent’s service game twice. Kalinina managed to produce a re-break but Putintseva, who has three Grand Slam quarter-final titles to her name, took the first set after three quarters of an hour.
In the second, Kalinina made a lot of errors, losing games after games and barely hitting the court with her strokes, losing the set 0-6. The unexpectedly one-sided final lasted 1 hour 10 minutes.
Yulia Putintseva receives USD 29,200 and 280 WTA points for the second WTA trophy of her career.

Hungarian-Romanian victory
In the doubles final, Hungary’s Fanny Stollár and Romania’s Mihaela Buzarnescu defeated Spain’s Aliona Bolsova and Tamara Korpatsch of Germany in two straight sets.
The first, 35-minute set was dominated by service breaks as the Hungarian-Romanian duo lost their service game three times, while the Spanish-German pair did that four times and thus the latter lost the first set 4-6.

Bolsova and Korpatsch were not in control of the second set, either and as a result, the Hungarian-Romanian duo quickly took a 3-0 lead. Their opponents produced a re-break, however, after 3:1, Stollár and Buzarnescu kept their break advantage throughout the set to take the Hungarian Grand Prix 2021 championship title.
For Stollár, who did not make it to the singles main draw from the qualifiers, it was her fifth WTA doubles final and her second tournament victory.