Saturday, May 3, 2014

Suarez Navarro finally wins a WTA title

It took her six tries, but Carla Suarez Navarro has finally joined the ranks of women who have won at least one WTA title. The Spaniard defeated Svetlana Kuznetsova 6-4, 3-6, 6-4 today in the final of the Portugal Open. And she did it from being down 1-4 in the third set. Like Elena Vesnina before her (it took the Russian seven tries, but she has now won two titles), Suarez Navarro had trouble closing big matches. And like Vesnina's 2013 breakthrough, this one is long overdue.

Top seeds Cara Black and Sania Mirza won the doubles title. They defeated Eva Hrdinova and Valerie Solovyeva 6-4, 6-3 in the final.

While the finals were being contested in Oeiras, qualifying play has been taking place in Madrid, and there's a lot of news to come out of that. Ula Radwanska, who probably couldn't win a bingo game right now, went out in the first round, to wild card Laura Pous-Tio (yes, she's still around). Yaroslava Shvedova and Alisa Kleybanova also went out in the first round of quaifying, and Kristina Mladenovic beat countrywoman Virginie Razzano.

In the second round, Monica Niculescu ran over Jana Cepelova 6-0, 6-1 in just 53 minutes. Belinda Bencic beat 3rd seed Camila Giorgi, and Mladenovic defeated Donna Vekic 7-5, 6-0.

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