Pennetta Wins All Italian U.S. Open Final, Announces Retirement

September 12, 2015 | By New York Tennis Magazine Staff
Flavia Pennetta 1

Italian Flavia Pennetta captured the first Grand Slam title of her career Saturday, beating her compatriot Roberta Vinci 7-6(4), 6-2 on an overcast day in Flushing Meadows.

While Pennetta needed just an hour to beat her semifinal opponent, second-seed Simona Halep, on Friday, Vinci spent a lot of physical and emotional energy to shock Serena Williams in three-sets, and it looked as if Pennetta was the fresher player on the court on Saturday.

The two exchanged breaks midway through the first set and Pennetta would go on to take it in a tie-breaker.

She came out in the second set and looked to shut the door immediately. The 33-year-old Pennetta in Vinci’s first two service games, and even after Vinci got one of those breaks back, Pennetta captured the first Grand Slam of her career by breaking at 5-2.

”It was not easy to play today with one of your best friends in the tour, with one you know for a long time,” said Pennetta. “There was a lot of emotion. It’s not easy to handle everything. But I’m really happy, because the first set was really tough. In the second, I started to play a little bit better so I’m really proud of everything this week.”

Pennetta fired 28 winners to just 22 unforced errors. She broke Vinci four times while winning 69 percent of her first serves.

“I was tired … especially in the first set,” said Vinci. “I think she played better. She was more solid than me and she played with a much better backhand and served better than me today.

Following the match, Pennetta announced her retirement from the WTA Tour at the end of 2015.

“Ah, why,” she said when pressed on why she was retiring. “Because sometimes it's getting hard for me to compete. This is the important point. When you are in the court, when you have to play 24 weeks in the year, you have to fight every week. And if you don't fight every week in the same way I did today, it's going to be bad. And I don't feel to have this power anymore sometimes .So this is the perfect moment, I think. Was a really hard decision to make, but I'm really happy that I did it. I'm really happy and proud of myself.”

Pennetta said she made the decision to retire in Toronto for the Rogers Cup, and said she would not rule out playing in the end of the year finals in Singapore.

We spend four years or three years in a house together in the same room in Rome in the Italian Federation.

“We know each other really well,” said Pennetta of Vinci. The two roomed together for three years while part of the Italian Federation. “We have so many things in our life happening together. It's funny to be here today, because we played our first match when we were nine-years-old in Brindisi, in my country club. So today was a really big day for both of us.”


New York Tennis Magazine Staff
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