The Hawks win 2022 World Tennis League after dominant performance

| by Zachary Wimer

The 2022 World Tennis League knows its champion, and it's The Hawks, as they defeated The Kites in the final match in the Coca-Cola Arena in Dubai.

The tie started with a match between Elena Rybakina and Iga Swiatek. Both players were unbeaten before their final meeting, but the Kazakh proved to be better, and she created a lot of space for errors for her colleagues. The Hawks led 12-4 after the first match and Alexander Zverev could increase that lead in the men's singles match.

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The German took on Felix Auger-Aliassime, who had to win to keep chances of his team alive. The match included an ugly moment, when Zverev appeared to suffer an injury and his team had to take timeout, something that is available at the World Tennis League.

However, after a few moments, he seemed to be fit to continue and finished the match. Regardless, the Canadian prevailed and won 6-4, 6-3 to cut back the deficit before the deciding mixed doubles match.

Shortly before the final, it was revealed that in case of victory of the trailing team in the mixed doubles, the match would continue unless the winning team wins a game or the losing team ties the score.

But this rule didn't need to be applied as Dominic Thiem and Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova showed no mercy against Holger Rune and Sania Mirza. The Hawks won the first set full of breaks, despite facing a set point in the tenth game.

Thiem and Pavlyuchenkova won the tie-break 7-4 and increased their level even further in the second set. This time, they were the only team to break as they marched towards a 7-6(4), 6-3 win.

After this match, The Hawks became the 2022 World Tennis League champions and showed that despite sharing only 2 Grand Slam titles among them, they could beat teams that included the 21-time Grand Slam champion Novak Djokovic and world no. 1 Iga Swiatek.

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