{"id":122347,"date":"2017-10-09T04:24:30","date_gmt":"2017-10-09T08:24:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=122347"},"modified":"2017-10-09T04:24:30","modified_gmt":"2017-10-09T08:24:30","slug":"nadal-wins-6th-title-of-year-in-beijing-garcia-beats-halep","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2017\/10\/09\/nadal-wins-6th-title-of-year-in-beijing-garcia-beats-halep\/","title":{"rendered":"Nadal wins 6th title of year in Beijing; Garcia beats Halep"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Top-ranked<\/a>
Top-ranked Nadal, who was tied with Roger Federer and Alexander Zverev at five titles this season, picked up his 75th career singles trophy with the win in Beijing. (Photo<\/a>: Rafa Nadal \/ Facebook<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Rafael Nadal beat Nick Kyrgios of Australia 6-2, 6-1 Sunday in the China Open final to win his sixth ATP title of the year, and Caroline Garcia defeated soon-to-be-No. 1 Simona Halep 6-4, 7-6 (3) in the women’s event.<\/p>\n

Top-ranked Nadal, who was tied with Roger Federer and Alexander Zverev at five titles this season, picked up his 75th career singles trophy with the win in Beijing.<\/p>\n

The 15th-ranked Garcia, who lost to Halep the two previous times they played, won her second consecutive WTA title. The Frenchwoman will make her top-10 debut when the new rankings come out on Monday.<\/p>\n

The 31-year-old Nadal’s six trophies this year include a record 10th title at the French Open and a third at the U.S. Open. The last time the Spaniard won at least six titles in a year was in 2013 when he captured 10 trophies for the season.<\/p>\n

Kyrgios started Sunday struggling with his serve and never found a confident range throughout the match. His first-serve percentage mostly languished under the 50 per cent mark.<\/p>\n

In contrast, Nadal always looked in charge and saved all four break points he faced.<\/p>\n

“I was playing very high intensity the whole match, changing the directions and not making many mistakes,” Nadal said.<\/p>\n

Kyrgios offered Nadal eight break points in the first set with Nadal taking two service breaks.<\/p>\n

Kyrgios was angered by a line call in the first set and his complaints eventually cost him a penalty point at the start of the eighth game.<\/p>\n

Kyrgios didn’t make it onto the board in the second set until he was serving with Nadal already leading 5-0.<\/p>\n

“In the semifinal I played well, obviously beating Alex (Zverev),” Kyrgios said. “It’s a typical type of week for me: beat a player well, then pretty much no-show.”<\/p>\n

Garcia also won her final in straight sets.<\/p>\n

“She played amazing tennis,” Halep said of Garcia. “She deserved to win today. She was better.”<\/p>\n

For Halep, the loss was particularly disappointing as she was unable to back up her guaranteed debut in the No. 1 ranking on Monday. She secured the top spot on Saturday with her semifinal victory over French Open champion Jelena Ostapenko.<\/p>\n

Halep’s best opportunity to rebound against Garcia ended when she failed to make good on any of the nine break points she had at 3-3 in the second set.<\/p>\n

“For sure it definitely turned the second set,” Garcia said. “This game was definitely very important.”<\/p>\n

In the second-set tiebreaker, the unseeded Garcia jumped out to 4-1, and on a first match point at 6-3 with Halep serving, the Romanian netted a forehand. Garcia fell to her knees in celebration.<\/p>\n

She is enjoying an 11-match winning streak, having captured her first title of the season at Wuhan last week. This is the second time she’s won a career-best 11 straight matches.<\/p>\n

“It was such an amazing two weeks,” Garcia said. “It went so fast.”<\/p>\n

Garcia saved a match point in her three-set quarterfinal victory over third-seeded Elina Svitolina of Ukraine.<\/p>\n

The last time Kyrgios played a No. 1 it was also against Nadal. In that 2014 fourth-round encounter at Wimbledon, the then 144th-ranked Kyrgios emerged a four-set winner.<\/p>\n

This was Nadal’s second China Open title in four trips to the final. He won his first in his Beijing debut in 2005.<\/p>\n

“In 2005, I never will believe that I will keep playing tennis in 2017,” Nadal said.<\/p>\n

Nadal leads Kyrgios 3-2 in career meetings, and 2-1 this season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rafael Nadal beat Nick Kyrgios of Australia 6-2, 6-1 Sunday in the China Open final to win his sixth ATP …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":122357,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[26772,26770,4506,26771],"class_list":["post-122347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-caroline-garcia","tag-nick-kyrgios","tag-rafael-nadal","tag-simona-halep","mauthors-sandra-harwitt","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122347"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122347\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/122357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}