Shvedova vs Santangelo
Last weekend, I went to watch the finals of the WTA Womens championship held at Bangalore. Doubles match between chinese teipei pair and russian/chinese-teipei pair was ok. The Russian (Kurd) did not play very serious and from the body language it looked she was okay with losing.
The best match was Shvedova vs Santangelo.
Santangelo, the defending champion had defeated India's heart throb Sania to come to finals.
Santangelo is a 16th ranked player from Italy, while Shvedova who got an entry to this tour due to absence of another Russian player is a ranked 119 and was playing her first big tournament.
From the very start, Shvedova looked impressive and agile. When the match started, her shots were more powerful and she tried for aces.
But Santangelo being a professional player was able to play effortless against the novice and she made Shvedova run all over the court.
We began to guess that Shvedova would soon run out of energy and Santangelo will take the match towards her side.
But this did not happen, Shvedova never got tired, she was able to play with a top seeded player running all over the court and at last defeating her! Many a times Shvedova won the set with Santangelo having the advantage. This shows her energy the practise she must have put in.
It was a wonderful match and a great lesson to learn for a newcomer in any sport that practise is the key to winning.