Australian Open 2018: Wozniacki beats Halep to win first Grand Slam title

Caroline Wozniacki beat world No.1 Simona Halep in the Australian Open women's singles final on Saturday to win her maiden Grand Slam title.

With the heat turning up at Melbourne Park, Halep and Wozniacki battled for two hours and 49 minutes in a battle of the first and second seed, respectively, where Wozniacki emerged victorious 7-6(2), 3-6, 6-4.

With the win, Wozniacki toppled Halep to go on top of the WTA rankings while Halep lost her top spot and the chance to win her maiden Grand Slam.

The final was a first between two non-slam winner in 38 years, the last such match being in 1980 when Hana Mandlikova beat home favourite Wendy Turnbull.

Caroline Wozniacki had a brilliant start to the day as she held her own service game and then broke Halep to go up 2-0 in the first set.

The world No.1 was 3-0 down when she arrived with total authority to win her first game of the match 40 to love.

From there both the players held their own service games to take the scoreline 5-3 in favour of Wozniacki.

The world No.2, serving for the set next, faltered and made three unforced errors while Halep's forehand did its job exceptionally well to get Halep back in the game.

Halep then held her serve to make it 5-5 and thereafter,



the set went into the tiebreaker.

Wozniacki completely dominated the tiebreaker as Halep struggled to run through the court and the second seed took the tiebreaker 7-2 and the set.

The second set began much better for the world No.1 as she held her serve but leading 4-3 in the set, Halep took a medical time-out and it looked like Halep was having muscular trouble in her leg.

It felt like the medical time-out gave her some strength and energy as Halep broke Wozniacki to lead 5-3.

She, thereafter, held her service game to take the second set 6-3.

The final set was an absolute rollercoaster with various service game spicing up the match.

With Wozniacki getting troubled by the heat and even taking a medical time-out of her own, it looked like Halep would take the match.

But even after Halep went up, Wozniacki broke Halep back to level the match again.

From there Wozniacki produced excellent tennis running all around the court and finding exceptionally beautiful angles to put Halep off.

With Halep serving 4-5 down, Wozniacki brought her forehand power to play and coupled with the one and only double fault by Halep, Wozniacki beat the world No.1 to win the Australian Open in Melbourne.