Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova defeats Carla Suarez Navarro in the final – Portugal Open 2013
World number 19, Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, continued her impressive run of the season in Oeiras, defeating the Spanish veteran, Carla Suarez Navarro, in the title match of the Portugal Open on Saturday. The Russian youngster exhibited
her brilliant tennis skills to wrap up her championship victory in straight sets, 7-5, 6-2, to claim her second WTA title of the running season.
Navarro had an amazing run en route to the final, outplaying the defending champion, Kaia Kanepi, in the semi-final round but couldn’t deliver her best in the big match. She posted some solid resistance in the opening set of the
match but went through a terrible slump in the following set to let the Russian fly away with the trophy. Pavlyuchenkova was a bit disappointed with her sloppy start in the contest but was extremely pleased with the ultimate outcome.
"I had a slow start - I was a little bit disappointed about that, it was the third match this week I started like that," Pavlyuchenkova said. "Also Carla was playing really well - it wasn't easy to play my game because she was
holding me back on the baseline, putting a lot of spin and moving me around. It wasn't easy, but I just tried to dig deep and fight and that really helped me in the end."
"Today I had chances to win the first set but Nastia was playing so well at those moments, and then she played really, really well in the second set," the Spaniard said.
Navarro had an excellent start to the match, breaking the Russian in the very first game and imposed a 2-0 lead right away. A regular game followed with both players holding their serves and ticking the score board on even terms.
Pavlyuchenkova finally nailed her first serve break of the day in the 10th game and levelled the score line at 5-5. She went on with her winning impetus and stung her second successive break point to seal the opening set at 7-5.
Once getting into her winning groove, Pavlyuchenkova stormed into the following set and rocketed away to 4-1 lead with an early break serve break. She went on to hold her entire serve games and kept belting assertive winners all
the way through. Navarro couldn’t recover from the early damage and kept lingering in the set. Pavlyuchenkova registered another break point in the eighth game and sealed her triumph at 6-2.
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