TENNIS WTA FINALS – Caroline Wozniacki defeated Agnieszka Radwanska in a old-fashioned friends-foes crucial match in the WTA Finals, Petra Kvitova dominated Maria Sharapova.
The Dane looked once again in a terrific shape, despite her opponent being known for her class in the defence department, she was taking the vast majority of long rallies. This fact seemed to slowly get into the mind of the Pole, whose consistency suffered a big drop as the match went on.
However, it was Radwanska to start the match in a better fashion, forcing Wozniacki to keep guessing the directions and variations of her game. But the world number six failed to put a big gap between her and the Dane, who slowly started to find a better pace off her strokes and limit the efficiency of Radwanska’s tricks.
At the end of a high quality first set, where both players spent a lot chasing each others’ accelerations, it was the former world number one who found the necessary push to take a decisive break and finally hold.
In the second set, Radwanska tried to change her tactics by being more aggressive, but this caused more errors to leak into her game, without really troubling the Dane, who, on the contrary, started to be more aggressive with serve and return.
From 3-2 in favour of the Pole, Wozniacki won four consecutive games, including a final love break to secure the second win in this group and the second of the season over her friend.
In the second match of the day, Kvitova stunned Sharapova in a one sided match that reopened the chances of all players to qualify for the semifinals.
With both players trying to put behind the bad opening match, it was Sharapova, strong of a favourable head-to-head, who started the match in a better way, but she immediately suffered the comeback of the Czech.
The Wimbledon champion, after trailing 0-2, won 10 out of 11 games, by hitting winners from everywhere on court and serving on top of her abilities. Sharapova looked still tired from the marathon opener with Wozniacki and suddenly many errors crept in.
However, the Russian showed her amazing fighting spirit and, when she was just one game away from suffering a 6-0 loss in the second set, she raised her game and tried a desperate comeback, if anything to go down fighting.
She broke the Czech and saved two match points before holding for 5-2, but Kvitova proved too good in the final game, closing with a stunning forehand cross-court winner and a loud Pojd to end the match.
The situation in the group of the WTA Finals is now very open, so that all the girls can still qualify given different combination of results.
