American Taylor Fritz beats countryman Sam Querrey to win men's tournament
Saturday 29 June 2019 19:51, UK
Karolina Pliskova defeated defending Wimbledon champion Angelique Kerber 6-1 6-4 to win her second Eastbourne title in three years.
The world No 3, champion in 2017, had reached the showpiece without losing more than three games in a set and the Czech continued her fine form to outclass three-time Grand Slam champion Kerber.
Pliskova broke Kerber three times on her way to winning the first set and one further break in a tighter second set proved decisive in the 71-minute encounter.
The 27-year-old will begin her Wimbledon campaign against world No 103 Zhu Lin from China on Monday.
"Of course, it's going to be new start, new beginning. Nobody's going to really think about this [at Wimbledon]. Maybe me," Pliskova said.
"I just want to totally forget about what was here. Just take maybe only the positives but not to be thinking that everything is going to go that easy as this week, because I never had a week like this, that I didn't lose that many games.
"I felt like everything went quite smooth. Maybe the second set today was the toughest, but I felt everything just went the way it should, which for sure is not going to be like this in Wimbledon."
Kerber, who will open her Wimbledon defence against Tatjana Maria on Tuesday, suffered her third defeat in an Eastbourne final but reached the semi-finals at both her grass-court warm-up tournaments.
"I will try to take the positive things from the whole week, from the last two weeks before going to Wimbledon now," she said. "I take the positive, how many good matches I had here. Of course today it was not the result that I wished, but I played against a good opponent."
In the men's tournament, Taylor Fritz won his first ATP title with a 6-3 6-4 victory over fellow American Sam Querrey.
Fritz backed up his victory against British No 1 and top seed Kyle Edmund in the semi-finals, defeating Querrey in exactly an hour without dropping serve.
The 21-year-old, who lost in his maiden final in Memphis three years ago, will play former finalist Tomas Berdych in the first round at Wimbledon on Tuesday.
We will have Wimbledon covered via our website skysports.com/tennis. On the move? Head to our app for mobile devices and iPad, or follow our Twitter account @SkySportsTennis to join in the conversation.
