
Welcome to Winner’s Circle, a segment where we review each winner of every ATP and WTA tournament during the truncated 2020 season.
In this edition, we follow Magda Linette as she powers through the draw in Hua Hin to claim her second career WTA title.
GSB Thailand Open
Winner: Magda Linette
Having fallen at the semifinal stage in 2019, Linette was hoping to go further and finally claim the Hua Hin title. The Polish star was seeded fifth and faced Kateryna Bondarenko in the opening round. She prevailed 6-2 6-2 to improve to 3-0 in career meetings against the Ukrainian.
Linette encountered some resistance in Shuai Peng in the second round, as Peng battled hard in the early stages of the match. However, the Chinese star was unable to recover after losing the first set as Linette swept past her in a 7-5 6-1 victory.
Awaiting Linette in the quarterfinal was Xiyu Wang of China, who began the match by cruising through the first set. Nonetheless, Linette was able to recover and assert herself, pulling off a 2-6 6-3 6-3 comeback victory. However, there was no love for the other top seeds on that Valentine's Day, as Elina Svitolina [1], Qiang Wang [3] and Saisai Zheng [4] were all upset.
Linette had once again made it to the semifinals, and she vanquished the demons of her past by defeating Patricia Maria Tig 7-5 6-4 to advance to the Hua Hin final. She would clash with Swiss teenager Leonie Kung, who was taking part in just her second main draw WTA event.
With the title within her grasp, Linette played aggressively from the start and relentlessly attacked her opponent's serve. She obtained a break in the first set and two more in the second to win the match 6-3 6-2 in 76 minutes. The Pole had finally won her second WTA title (Bronx 2019), and this victory also saw her climb nine spots to a career-high of No.33 on the WTA rankings.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rloRtO4hSZQ[/embed]
Growing up in a household where soccer was king, my earliest memories are filled with chants from packed stadiums and the rhythm of a ball being passed across neighborhood streets. But somewhere along the way, the quiet elegance and raw emotion of tennis pulled me in. What began as a curiosity became a lifelong passion; not just for the sport itself, but for the stories it tells: of grit, of heartbreak, of improbable comebacks and human resilience.
As a tennis writer, I bring the observational lens of someone who didn’t grow up in the sport, but fell in love with it as an outsider; a perspective that lets me see both its technical beauty and its emotional depth. Over the years working with TennisUpToDate, I’ve had the privilege of reaching more than 3.5 million readers worldwide, with one of my features ranking among the site’s top three articles.
With a background in storytelling and a creative mind always searching for meaning beyond the scoreboard, I aim to craft narratives that go deeper than results and rankings. Whether it’s a rising star breaking through or a veteran fighting off Father Time, I try to capture the heartbeat behind the headlines.
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