Nadia Petrova upsets Shahar Peer to clinch tenth WTA title – Citi Open 2011
Second seeded Russian Nadia Petrova stunned top seeded Israeli Shahar Peer in straight sets at the Citi Open 2011, first edition of the WTA international event held on the hard courts at the College Park, Maryland in Washington,
D.C., United States. Petrova registered a 7-5, 6-2 victory over the Israeli to shelf her tenth WTA title on Sunday.
The wild card entrant, Petrova re-created her 2006 magic, when she was world number three, to build a memorable moment on the 31st of July after winning her first title in almost three years. After earning success in
this one and half hour long match at this first women’s event on the 2011 US Open Series, the Russian maintained her winning record against Peer and extended her lead in their head-to-head series by 6-0.
29-year-old Russian made a shaky start after entering the court as she lost her opening serve in the first game. However, she snatched her break back in the fourth game and after keeping her entire remaining serves, she broke Peer’s
serve again in the last game to seal the opener with a 7-5 win.
Petrova lost her opening serve again in the very first game but made a similar return in the fourth game to tie the scores at 2-2. She then unleashed flurry of groundstrokes to reel off last four games in a row and clinched the
set with an assuring 6-2 score line.
Overall, the Russian clobbered a higher first serve share and registered a spectacular 83 percent win on it.
"I knew Shahar wasn't able to hurt me with her serve, especially her second serve, so even though I was broken early in each set I knew I could turn it around," Petrova said. "I'm happy with my record against her. And today was
an important match, going for the title - all I had in my mind was to fight for every point and at the end of the day walk away with the beautiful trophy."
Peer rallied past third seed Tamira Paszek in troublesome three sets in three hours on Saturday to reach this spot.
"I've been serving very well all week but this was the first match where I didn't really serve that well," Peer said after the match. "Nadia served really huge. She's a great player and can get out of tough situations with her
serve. She played very well and deserved to win today."
Despite losing the final, Peer is happy for her current form after a dismal performance in previous tournaments. She still leads 5-3 record in WTA finals.
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