Sunday, April 13, 2014

Garcia wins everything in Bogota, France rules weekend

Caroline Garcia won her first WTA title today. The Frenchwoman upset top seed and defending champion Jelena Jankovic in the Bogota final, beating her 6-3, 6-4. This was Garcia's first win over a top 10 player. Serving for the match at 15-all, Garcia hit two aces followed by a winner.

Jankovic had trouble finding her clay court legs in Charleston, and apparently has some work to do in this clay court season.

Garcia, with partner Lara Arruabarrina, also won the doubles title. The champions upset top seeds Vania King and Chanelle Scheepers 7-6, 6-4 in the final. Garcia also beat King in singles in the semifinals.

The 20-year-old Garcia, who is coached by her father, is currently ranked number 74 in the world, but her ranking will rise as of tomorrow. Garcia precedes both world number 18 Sloane Stephens and world number 19 Eugenie Bouchard in grabbing a first title.

The unseeded Giorgi had a good week, defeating 2nd seed Roberta Vinci and 3rd seed Carla Suarez Navarro.

Meanwhile, in Katowice, Alize Cornet won her fourth WTA title, and did it in expected Cornet fashion. First she upset top seed (a lot of that going on) Agnieszka Radwanska in the semifinals. She won 0-6, 6-2, 6-4, saving a match point along the way. That is so Cornet. But the real excitement was yet to come. In the final, the 4th-seeded Frenchwoman defeated Camila Giorgi 7-6, 5-7, 7-5. The match lasted over 3 hours and 11 minutes, and contained enough drama to probably please all spectators. Part of that drama was the Italian player's fight to extend the match after going down 3-5 in the second set.

The Katowice doubles final also involved an upset of the top seeds. The unseeded team of Yuliya Beygelzimer and Olga Savchuk defeated number 1 seeds Klara Koukalova and Monica Niculescu 6-4, 5-7, 10-7.

Cornet and Garcia are both on the French Fed Cup team which will compete against the USA Fed Cup team April 19 and 20 in the World Group Play-Offs.

3 comments:

Todd.Spiker said...

Hmmm, a Russian Fed Cup breakthrough? Makarova and Vesnina are included on the roster. I guess the tipping point was reached last FC weekend.

Cibulkova's not on the Slovak team, though... but is the #1 seed in Kuala Lumpur.

Diane said...

I didn t even bother to look at the Russian Fed Cup roster. Sounds like a breakthrough to me, yes. I wonder what made them agree to play.

Well, at least the Slovak Reoublic has Cepelova. After seeing her in Charleston, I think that's a real plus.

Unknown said...

i love single matches the following Fed cup ,inspite of that few matches are intereting like this one .
http://womentennisplayers.blogspot.in/