{"id":455360,"date":"2026-02-07T23:59:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-07T23:59:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/455360\/"},"modified":"2026-02-07T23:59:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-07T23:59:08","slug":"czech-qualifier-sara-bejlek-stuns-ekaterina-alexandrova-to-win-maiden-title-in-abu-dhabi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/455360\/","title":{"rendered":"Czech qualifier Sara Bejlek stuns Ekaterina Alexandrova to win maiden title in Abu Dhabi"},"content":{"rendered":"<p data-testid=\"wcl-news-perex\" itemprop=\"description\">Young Czech qualifier Sara Bejlek won the first WTA title of her career on Saturday as she beat Russian second seed Ekaterina Alexandrova 7-6(5), 6-1 in the final of the Abu Dhabi Open.<\/p>\n<p>After battling her way through the qualifiers, the 20-year-old left-hander <a href=\"https:\/\/www.flashscore.com\/match\/tennis\/alexandrova-e-dzbgeEFF\/bejlek-s-jVCKq0LH\/?mid=zH8eI82m\" data-analytics-element=\"ARTICLE_TEXT_LINK\" data-analytics-alias=\"internal\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">recorded her seventh consecutive victory<\/a> on the Emirati hard courts in just under one hour and 40 minutes against the world number 11.<\/p>\n<p>After defeating former Roland Garros champion <a href=\"https:\/\/www.flashscore.com\/player\/ostapenko-jelena\/Gloq9MUN\/\" data-analytics-element=\"ARTICLE_TEXT_LINK\" data-analytics-alias=\"internal\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Jelena Ostapenko<\/a> of Latvia in the second round and Denmark&#8217;s 16th-ranked <a href=\"https:\/\/www.flashscore.com\/player\/tauson-clara\/2PPTHPya\/\" data-analytics-element=\"ARTICLE_TEXT_LINK\" data-analytics-alias=\"internal\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Clara Tauson<\/a> in the semi-finals, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.flashscore.com\/player\/bejlek-sara\/jVCKq0LH\/\" data-analytics-element=\"ARTICLE_TEXT_LINK\" data-analytics-alias=\"internal\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Bejlek<\/a> had already had a week to remember before the final of the 500-level event.<\/p>\n<p>At 4-3 in the first set, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.flashscore.com\/player\/alexandrova-ekaterina\/dzbgeEFF\/\" data-analytics-element=\"ARTICLE_TEXT_LINK\" data-analytics-alias=\"internal\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Alexandrova<\/a> called for a medical time-out.<\/p>\n<p>The Russian saved two set points at 6-5, but was unable to fend off another in the tie-break, eventually going down 7-5 after more than an hour and 10 minutes.<\/p>\n<p>Against a visibly struggling Alexandrova, Bejlek ran away with the second set in less than 30 minutes.<\/p>\n<p>The Czech, whose best ranking to date was 75th, will enter the top 50 for the first time thanks to her victory.<\/p>\n<p>Despite her defeat, Alexandrova will return to the top 10 in the next WTA rankings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Young Czech qualifier Sara Bejlek won the first WTA title of her career on Saturday as she beat&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":455361,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":["post-455360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/455360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=455360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/455360\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/455361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=455360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=455360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=455360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}