Garbine Muguruza returns to tennis smashing through Patricia Tig in straight sets

Garbine Muguruza in fine form during her first-round match against Patricia Maria Tig at the Internazionali D'Italia Tuesday. 

Garbine Muguruza had a stunning performance to open the Internazionali D’Italia on Tuesday. Despite rainy conditions on the courts of the Foro Italico, the Spaniard took care of business swiftly against Patricia Maria Tig in straight sets 6-1, 6-2 on Grandstand court. It was a dominating outcome that took more than a week to witness. 

A change occurred suddenly for the Spaniard as she was to face Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, but a withdraw from the Russian brought up the Romanian to take on the former world number one. The Spaniard missed out on playing on her home courts back at the Madrid Open due to injury. With the missed opportunity to prepare for next week’s grand slam in Paris, Muguruza had to step into Rome under rainy conditions. 

Before it was to fall on them, the Spaniard opened the scoring with a hold of serve in the first. It took the same amount of effort to break Tig on serve in the second after she gained two points. Tig managed to break back in the third but she then suffered a big hit in the fourth that put things into one-way traffic. Tig double-faulted twice in the fourth that allowed Muguruza to gain a breakpoint. The Romanian forced deuce but failed to take control of her offense to get out of danger. 

From that point, Muguruza took dictation of the next three games, rushing through Tig on serve, dealing with adversity in the sixth, and closing things out with a shutout in the seventh that took just 27 minutes to accomplish. Rain began to fall harder on the two players as they returned to action with Muguruza getting back to work. 

She once again broke Tig, who served to open the second set but failed to complete her late comeback. Muguruza made it 2-0 with a strong hold, but she had a challenging time with the rain becoming an issue. Through the next two games, they were tied as both broke one another with the court becoming slippery. They refused to suspend play just as Muguruza made it 4-2. 

Before the seventh got underway, umpire Juan Zhang asked Muguruza and Tig if they really wanted to continue action due to a heavy downpour. They did, and when the game finished, Muguruza made it 5-2 and called for the physio. The Spaniard had her left heel tapped up to deal with a blister. She served for the match in the eighth taking command to get through the game with Tig gaining a single point before her tournament was cut once again. 

Muguruza had just 20 winners and three aces against Tig, whose five double faults wreaked havoc upon her game. She was outscored 55-29 giving the indication that her sudden appearance didn’t bother the Spaniard one bit.