Weekend Winner: Simona Halep rides peak brand of tennis to Dubai title

What happens in Dubai usually stays in Dubai. The WTA’s edition of the Duty Free Championships is a Premier-Level event, and a highly lucrative one, yet its results rarely last in the sport’s collective memory. The majors, the Masters 1000s, the Premier Mandatories: Fans are apt to remember who won those tournaments at the end of the season, and cite them whenever they compare two players’ career achievements. Dubai? If you’re like me, by the time the Grand Slam season rolls around, you have to think hard to recall who won.

So why is the brief Arabian swing, through Dubai and Doha, always such a pleasure to watch from afar? Maybe it’s the sight of warm weather and outdoor tennis in the middle of a North American winter. Maybe it’s the atmosphere—polyglot, casual, engaged—that prevails in both arenas. Maybe it’s the fact that the stakes are relatively low, and a tennis match is just a tennis match, not a matter of earth-shattering significance.

All of that was true again in Dubai over the past week, but this year the result, and the road that took us there, shouldn’t be so easily forgotten. For entertainment value, it may be hard to beat all year. That’s mostly due to the performances of the two finalists, Simona Halep and Elena Rybakina. In their roundabout marches to the championship match, one proved herself to be a player for the future, and the other proved herself to be a player to watch now, every time she walks on the court.

The phrase may getting a little tired, but in this case it’s true: This was Peak Simona Halep. If a fan of the future wants to know what the Romanian’s game was all about, and what her appeal was all about, the four matches she won last week would make for a good time capsule.

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In her first match, she saved a match point and won a back-and-forth thriller over Ons Jabeur. In the quarterfinal round, she came back from a set down to beat the taller and more powerful Aryna Sabalenka Having been granted a second life, she rolled over Jen Brady 6-2, 6-0 in the semifinals. Finally, Halep capped her week by fending off the seemingly unstoppable force of Rybakina’s ground strokes, in another third-set tiebreaker. It was Halep’s 20th career title, and her first since Wimbledon last year.

“It feels great that I could do it. Actually, it feels amazing,” Halep said. “She fought till the end. She did give up any balls. It was really tough mentally. The pressure was very high. But I wanted it badly, so that’s why I fought to the end.”

In her mind, it was also a sign that, at 28, she’s not slipping.

“I’ve done a lot of results, many results these six, seven years. I’m staying here in the Top 5, Top 10, which is not easy. I’m proud of my job. Also, this tournament gives me a lot of confidence that I’m still here.”

Halep is still here, and still winning the way she has always won. In Dubai, she did it with her customary mix of scrappiness and stubbornness, speed and shotmaking. In the final, she kept chasing down Rybakina’s drives, kept throwing up lobs, kept coming up with passes, kept staying alive any way she could, until Rybakina finally missed.

Halep is a fighter, as she likes to say, but she can also let her frustration get the best of her for stretches. She hates making errors, she hates falling behind in the score, she hates when she chooses the wrong shot, she hates any imperfections in her game. I don’t think this is how most sports psychologists would advise an athlete to think or act on court; imperfections are inevitable in tennis, and it’s best to put them out of your mind as soon as possible. The good thing about Halep is that her mood can swing from negative to positive just as quickly; a couple of winners, and she’s pumping her fist and believing in herself again. The fact that Halep, whether she’s up or down, can’t hide how much she wants to win is a big part of her appeal. Simona gives us a lot to watch, and few players take part in as many epic matches as she does.

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In this epic, Halep had the perfect foil in Rybakina—their games and personalities are polar opposites. The 6’0” Moscow native hits with immensely easy power from both sides, can create winners from anywhere, and doesn’t hesitate to go for them, whatever the situation. Just as important is her demeanor; even at 20, she seems to understand that mistakes will be made, and there’s no reason to berate herself for them, or let one miss lead to another. With Rybakina, it can be hard to tell whether she’s won or lost the previous point, and her post-win celebrations have mostly consisted of her walking straight to the net and shaking hands with her opponent.

Whatever Rybakina is doing, it’s working. To say she has been on a roll in 2020 would be an understatement. She has played five events this year, and made the final of four of them; only at the Australian Open did she fail to reach the title match. In Dubai, she came from a set down to beat fellow 20-year-old Sofia Kenin, she took out No. 2 Karolina Pliskova in straight sets, and she saved a set point in each set in a two-tiebreaker win over Petra Martic in the semis. No miss, and no deficit, seems to faze Rybakina. Even after coming up two points short of her second title of the year, she kept her perspective.

“In the beginning of the week I didn’t expect that I can be in the final,” said Rybakina, who was coming off a runner-up finish in St. Petersburg. “So it’s been a great week for me.”

So far, 2020 has belonged to Elena Rybakina, but this week belonged to Simona Halep. Whether or not we remember what happened in Dubai for long, it was fun while it lasted.