Russia's Yaroslava Shvedova successfully completed a dream run at the Bangalore Open by beating top seed and defending champion Mara Santangelo in the final for her maiden WTA title on Sunday.
The 19-year-old Russian, the Bangalore crowd's latest darling, beat Italy's Santangelo 6-4, 6-4 to win the $175,000, Tier III event.
Prior to this week, the Shvedova's best showings on the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour was two second round finishes, at Philadelphia in 2005 and Memphis in 2006.
She had beaten seventh seed Tamarine Tanasugarn and second seed and local hope Sania Mirza en route to a dream final. The strapping Russian, playing her first final, kept up her aggressive game plan to catch Santangelo on the wrong foot. Her big serve and solid backhand resisted the pressure of her opponent's all-court game.
After the players traded breaks in the third and fourth games, Shvedova got the decisive lead in the seventh game with the set going on from there on serve.
Shvedova carried the momentum into the second set, breaking into an early 2-0 lead. The Russian had her chances on Santangelo's serve in the third game as well, when she was a double break up. Though Santangelo warded off that problem, she could not convert the opportunities in the next game as Shvedova came up with the goods each time her serve seemed under threat, just as she had for the entire week.
Coming from a small town near Moscow, and not a member of the American-trained Russian brigade, Shvedova fell on her knees in celebration after winning the match. The youngster could not control either the tears or the giggling smiles.
At the presentation ceremony, she thanked everyone associated with the event, right from the sponsors to the ball boys, and "every woman who has worked in the locker room."
Chinese Taipei duo retain doubles title
It was a perfect day to start the Chinese New Year for defending champions Yung-Jan Chan and Chia-Jung Chuangof Chinese Taipei, who retained their doubles title, defeating fourth seeds Su-Wei Hsieh of Chinese Taipei and Alla Kudryavtseva of Russia 6-7 (4-7), 6-2, 11-9 earlier.
By beating the Taipei-Russian duo, Chan and Chuang got richer by $7,620 and 140 points, while the runners-up earned $4,020, 100 points.
In a battle of nerves and serves, Chang-Chuang played extremely good tennis and maintained the suspense till the end, though they were outplayed by Hsieh-Kudryavtseva in the first set 7-6 (7-3).
Going by the first set, the 105-minute battle could have gone either way as the first and fourth seed players broke each other service twice to reach tie-breaker at 6-6. At one stage, Hsieh-Kudryavtseva were leading 4-1. But, Chan-Chuang sprung back and bagged the next three points to place the game evenly at 4-4. Immediately, Hsieh- Kudryavtseva tightened the noose and bagged the next three points and the set (7-4).
However, Chan-Chuang decided to spoil Hsieh-Kudryavtseva party though the game was evenly poised at 2-2 in the second set. The champions played some serious tennis and and broke Hsieh-Kudryavtseva services in the third fifth and seventh fourth game to conquer the next four games 6-2 that forced them to enter the super tie-breaker to determine the winner.
The super tie-breaker looked like a ding-dong battle with Hsieh-Kudryavtseva down from 4-7 raced to level the score at 9-9. Finally, the champions showed their might and retained the title (11-9).
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