Garbine Muguruza made her first start as world number one count for a lot at the Toray Pan Pacific Open Tuesday night. The top seed finished her straight sets match over Monica Puig
winning 6-4, 6-0 at the Ariake Colosseum in Tokyo.
This was the first match since the Spaniard took control of the world number one spot for the very first time. It set her up perfectly for a rematch of the third round at the Rio Olympics where Puig won heavily against Muguruza 6-1, 6-1. Though she went home with the gold medal, Puig hasn’t been able to put her success to produce more on the WTA tour. The odds would be heavily stacked against the soon to be 24-year-old to pull off a similar result against Muguruza who continues to climb higher than ever in her career.
The match went to deuce with Puig trying to hold her own against Muguruza from the start. The two went three breaks in the span of five minutes before the world number one earned the break to lead. Muguruza opened the gap but watched as Puig got her offense together that leveled her back. Muguruza answered with another show of force that got her out front on the scoreboard before taking a meeting With Sam Sumyk to help ease her into further success. It came in the shape of another consecutive win taking a 4-2 lead with the pressure becoming heavier for the world number 70.
She overcame the adversity by recovering the gap but overtaking the top seeded player was another tough challenge. She watched Muguruza hold her end together to get broken in the eighth but stopped her from swiftly bringing an end to the set with the ball in her hands. By the tenth, it was the world number one who finished things off herself winning on her second set attempt completing 44 minutes. Despite having a low second serve percentage, Muguruza had good control on the primary offense and at times good court positioning.
She delivered a stronger outing in the second taking a massive lead that included a double break and a hold of her own. With a 4-0 hole hanging over her head, Puig did everything in her power to fight against the world number one and make her serve count for something. She went to deuce spanning six breaks but the Spaniard was very much in control securing her fifth straight win with one more to go. A last desperate fight for the Puerto Rican was in motion as she struggled with the forehand errors but edged her way to playing on deuce. It lasted just two breaks as the 23-year-old finished off the night with an ace down the middle line to end 1 hour and 14 minutes.
Muguruza showed her full potential scoring on 11 of 14 of her first serve shots with barely any action needed on the second. Despite a low return on the front, she managed to still play hard against Puig to earn the victory she so desired in her performance as the top seed. She’ll await her round of eight match against Caroline Garcia on Thursday night
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