Is back-to-back Rome champ Svitolina ready to take on Paris pressure?

Can a loss unfairly overshadow a win? In the case of Simona Halep’s stunningly rapid 6-0, 6-4 defeat at the hands of Elina Svitolina in the Rome women’s final on Sunday, the answer would seem to be yes.

Throughout the 19-minute first set, the talk on TV and Twitter, and most likely in the stands at the Foro Italico, was all about the Romanian. Where had the No. 1 seed’s game gone? Twenty-four hours earlier, she had gritted her way past Maria Sharapova in three long sets. Now, with the title on the line, she was rushing from one lost point to the next, shanking one shot after the next, while barely lifting her eyes from the ground. Even her coach, the normally upbeat Darren Cahill, told her that she was on her own with this one. While Halep played a better and livelier second set, she never seriously challenged Svitolina.

“I think I was a little bit tight, and the muscles were a little stiff,” said Halep, who was treated for an apparent back issue during second set. “...But it was not about the injury. Today I was just not fresh enough to start the match better.”

Anytime a player ranked No. 1 suffers a possible injury and loses, it’s going to draw headlines. Worse for Halep is that this defeat is part of a long-running trend. Since winning in Madrid last May, she’s 1-6 in finals, her lone victory coming at a small, International-level event in Shenzhen the first week of 2018. Not only does the WTA’s No. 1 player not have a Slam title, she currently doesn’t hold any Premier or Premier Mandatory titles, either.

WATCH: Holding Serve, Elina Svitolina

What keeps Halep, who is clearly among the game’s great talents, from crossing the finish line? She can get beat up on the way to finals, as she did during her two marathon wins at the Australian Open this year, and in her win over Sharapova in Rome this weekend. But her size, relative to most of her top-ranked opponents’, also seems to have Halep with a scrappy underdog’s mentality that she can only overcome for so long. While she was able to fend one powerful player, she couldn’t get back up and do the same thing against Svitolina, who was hitting every bit as big as Sharapova on Sunday.

And that, finally, brings us to the winner. Svitolina was mildly irritated when a reporter, looking at the match from the Halep point of view, described the first set as “strange.”

“Well,” Svitolina said, “I don’t think it was a strange match. It was a really good match, from my side.

“I think I dominated all the match. I was trying to put lots of pressure on Simona with my game, tried to really take the ball early and open the court. It worked really good today. I was feeling good.”

Svitolina didn’t hesitate to attack Halep’s short second serves, and keep attacking from there. Playing far into the court and taking the ball at its peak, she made everything look easy and risk-free.

While finals have become the bane of Halep’s existence, they’ve brought out the best in Svitolina in recent years. She has now won eight in a row, including two straight in Rome. The 23-year-old said on Sunday that her love of finals dates back to a wake-up call she experienced in juniors.

“I always remember when I lost very—was very painful final against Bouchard at Wimbledon, juniors,” Svitolina said. “This really taught me a lot...I that final, I was so stressed, so scared that I didn’t even play two balls into the court. So ever since that moment I decided that, I’m gonna go out there and do something.”

“Like today, from the first point I was trying to play really aggressive and to go for my shots.”

WATCH: Unstrung, Pallacorda Stadium

All of which leaves Svitolina in exactly the same position she was in one year ago. A Rome champion, and a solid dark-horse pick to win her first major title at Roland Garros. Last year, she lost a heartbreaker in Paris, after holding a match point, to Halep in the quarterfinals. That remains her best result at any Grand Slam event. The pressure is on for Svitolina to do more this time; to her credit, she says she’s ready to take it on.

“It’s gonna be different, definitely, from last year,” Svitolina said of her expectations for Paris. “Last year, I was almost—first time for me going into the Grand Slam as a favorite.”

“I’m going to take it as a challenge first. For me, very important to take one match at a time and just go out there enjoy playing on the big courts, atmosphere. Roland Garros, you know, that’s what we are training for. And I’m gonna give it the best shot.”

Judging by what she did to the world’s No. 1-ranked player on Sunday, Svitolina’s best shot is good enough. Now we’ll see if she can do something she hasn’t done before: throw that shot seven straight times over two weeks.

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