For 90 minutes, Svetlana Kuznetsova kept Maria Sharapova on the run, dashing from corner to corner in vain pursuit of a championship.
As a weary Sharapova found herself on the verge of defeat, she went scrambling yet again after a shot and exclaimed: ”Ai-yi-yi.”
The crowd laughed, and Kuznetsova won the exchange to reach match point. The former United States Open champion then finished with an ace for her first tournament title in 18 months, beating Sharapova 6-4, 6-3 on Saturday at the Nasdaq-100 Open.
”I was not expecting this, but I was doing my best,” Kuznetsova said. ”I wanted this trophy badly.”
Seeded 12th, she won the all-Russian final thanks to a superior serve and forehand, repeatedly driving Sharapova into one corner and then hitting a winner into the other.
The fourth-seeded Sharapova finished as runner-up at Key Biscayne for the second year in a row. She said she was ”a little tired” after winning 11 consecutive matches this month, including the final at Indian Wells.
”Physically it was very difficult to keep up with Svetlana today,” Sharapova said. ”I just wasn’t physically ready to run down a lot of balls.”
And what about the exclamation, ”Ai-yi-yi”?
”At that point in the match,” Sharapova said, ”maybe if you laugh, something will happen.”
During her semifinal victory over Tatiana Golovin, Sharapova drew jeers from the crowd when she took a toilet break perceived as gamesmanship after she failed to convert four match points. There was no jeering during the final, but the crowd rooted for Kuznetsova from the start. She smiled when asked why.
”I don’t want to get into that,” she said. ”I heard a lot about the match in the semifinals … For me, it’s a bit unusual, to play Maria and have the crowd behind you.”
Fans will have another underdog to cheer for Sunday: sixth-seeded Ivan Ljubicic of Croatia, playing his first final in the US at age 27. He’ll face top-seeded Roger Federer, the defending champion.
Kuznetsova broke serve to go up 3-1 in the opening set and led the rest of the way. As Sharapova fell behind, a small plane with an advertising banner hovered over the stadium, compounding her unhappiness. She gestured in annoyance at least twice and complained to the chair umpire about the noisy plane.
”It only circled around about 50 times,” Sharapova said. ”Pretty weird.”
The county, which owns the tennis complex, worked with the Federal Aviation Administration to resolve the matter, and the plane departed after the first set.
”Maria didn’t like it,” Kuznetsova said. ”I didn’t want to get into it. I was just trying to get myself not to lose my concentration.”
Video replay didn’t help Sharapova, either. All 11 of her challenges were rejected, and Kuznetsova won her only challenge in the final.
En route to the title, Kuznetsova saved a match point in the fourth round against Martina Hingis and beat four top-25 players, including top-ranked Amelie Mauresmo in the semifinals. The championship was Kuznetsova’s first since September 2004, when she won her first grand-slam title at the US Open and then won a small event in Indonesia a week later.
Last year she struggled with injuries, reached only one final and fell out of the top 10. But her fierce forehand is again a force on the women’s tour.
”Before, I think I was trying to hit the ball too hard,” she said. ”Now I’m just playing like half my power, and the ball seems to go pretty fast, so I’m pretty excited about that.”
Kuznetsova said her only regret about winning the tournament was that it left her with no time to shop. As consolation, she received $533 350 for her first WTA Tour tier-one title.
She’ll climb from 14th to 10th in next week’s WTA Tour rankings, with Venus Williams slipping one spot to 11th. — Sapa-AP