Archive for the 'Vera Dushevina' Category
"All the girls were trying to catch the bouquet, and then suddenly from somewhere Vera Dushevina came and sprinted and stole it from me," Maria Kirilenko said with a laugh.
Categories: Maria Kirilenko and Vera Dushevina
Tags: Maria Kirilenko, Vera Dushevina
Maria Kirilenko said that last week's wedding between former player Elena Dementieva and hockey's Maxim Afinogenov in Moscow was the best one she ever attended. Kirilenko went to the wedding with her long time boyfriend, fellow Russian player Igor Andreev. Other players to attend the Olympic gold medalist's wedding were Yevgeny Kafelnikov, Vera Zvonareva, Dinara Safina, Svetlana Kuznetsova, Elena Vesnina and Vera Dushevina, among others.
"Elena and her husband were always with the guests," said Kirilenko. "They were sitting with us, talking on the microphone, they were dancing together. It was unbelievable. Normally when you go to wedding, you are sitting and watching and it's kind of boring." Kirilenko said that the newlyweds performed a duet, singing a love song to each other while dancing. "Elena told me they practiced a lot. I was surprised she sang well." Kirilenko said that before Dementieva tossed the bouquet, that Dementieva winked at her to go to the middle of the pack and try to catch it. But she had no such luck.
Vera Zvonareva became the latest women's seed to fall after a comprehensive 6-2 6-3 third-round defeat by Tsvetana Pironkova.
Categories: Tsvetana Pironkova, Venus Williams and Vera Dushevina
Tags: Marion Bartoli, Tsvetana Pironkova, Venus Williams
Bulgarian Pironkova was the surprise package in last year's tournament, reaching the semi-finals where she was knocked out by Russian Zvonareva. But the 32nd seed avenged that defeat as Zvonareva's game crumbled on Court Two, with 18 unforced errors.
Five-time Wimbledon champion Williams was in equally impressive form, sweeping aside Spain's Maria Jose Martinez Sanchez 6-0 6-2, setting up a fourth-round tie against Pironkova.
Ninth seed Marion Bartoli survived three match points to beat Lourdes Dominguez Lino 4-6 7-5 6-2. The unseeded Spaniard, ranked 48th in the world, served for the match at 5-4 in the second set but Bartoli, who lost to Venus Williams in the 2007 Wimbledon final, displayed impressive resilience to level the match and break her opponent's serve in the next game before levelling. And she sealed victory with a commanding performance in the final set to set up a third-round match against Italy's 21st seed Flavia Pennetta.
In the third round, former French and US Open champion Svetlana Kuznetsova, the 12th seed, suffered a 4-6 6-3 6-4 defeat by Belgium's 19th seed Carolina Wickmayer. Former world number three Nadia Petrova, unseeded at SW19, also advanced into the next round following a 6-3 6-2 win over Kateryna Bondarenko.
Ivanovic has a realistic chance for her first title of 2010.
Categories: ana Ivanovic and Vera Dushevina
Tags: ana Ivanovic, Vera Dushevina
Ana Ivanovic has been drawn to face Russian world No.62 Vera Dushevina in the first round of the Hansol Korea Open in Seoul. The tournament begins on Monday, with Ana's round one clash expected to take place on Tuesday.
She is familiar with 23-year-old Dushevina, having played her six times on the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour. She holds a 5-1 head-to-head advantage.
Should she reach round two, seventh-seeded Ivanovic will meet either Julia Goerges or Klara Zakapolova. Third seed Maria Kirilenko is a possible quarter-finals opponent.
Top seed Nadia Petrova and No.6 Yaroslava Shvedova are potential semi-final adversaries.
The seeded players in the bottom half of the draw, whom Ana cannot meet until the final, are No.2 Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, No.4 Maria Jose Martinez Sanchez, No.5 Alisa Kleybanova and No.8 Agnes Szavay.
Serena is ousted by Petrova after Venus wins to secure the #2 spot.
Categories: Madrid Open, Nadia Petrova, Serena Williams and Vera Dushevina
Tags: Madrid Open, Nadia Petrova, Serena Williams, Venus Williams
Serena Williams crashed out in the third round of the Madrid Open when she lost 4-6 6-2 6-3 to Russian Nadia Petrova on Wednesday.
The American, who won her 12th grand slam singles title at the Australian Open in January before injury sidelined her for three months, looked increasingly distraught as the match wore on in the face of some powerful and accurate hitting from the 16th seed.
A pumped-up Petrova ground her opponent into submission, constantly hitting the lines, and Williams appeared to have given up the ghost well before she sent a forehand over the baseline on the Russian's first match point.
Big sister Venus Williams cemented a return to the No.2 ranking at the Mutua Madrileña Madrid Open on Wednesday, beating Francesca Schiavone in the third round of the $4.5-million Premier-level event.
Williams, the No.4 seed this week, was broken early and lost the first set but regrouped in a big way, rolling past the No.15-seeded Italian, 36 61 62. The win secured her return to the No.2 ranking; the last time the 29-year-old Williams was in the Top 2 was on May 11, 2003, almost exactly seven years ago.
Who is the up and coming Vera Dushevina?
Categories: Vera Dushevina
Tags: Vera Dushevina
At the tender age of 16 years, eight months, Russian Vera Douchevina waved goodbye to her junior career with a runner-up finish at Roland Garros this past June.
Wimbledon and Orange Bowl girls' singles champion in 2002, the Moscow native is the latest in a string of Russian girls making their first tentative, albeit very impressive, steps on the WTA Tour.
Vera, who lists her favorite player as Jennifer Capriati, plays an aggressive, baseline game, similar to that of her idol.
Earlier this year, she was ranked No.1 on the ITF Junior Singles Rankings and in the past few months has been trying her luck in the senior ranks.
Having made her WTA Tour event as an unranked qualifier at Warsaw last year (just her second senior outing), she qualified for the NASDAQ-100 Open in Miami this past March. In the first round she ousted world No.70 Patricia Wartusch 60 63 before putting in a strong showing against Justine Henin-Hardenne, falling 63 62.
A month ago, Vera picked up her first singles title, winning an ITF Women's Circuit tournament in Innsbruck. Under the WTA Tour's 'feed up' system, that win earned her direct entry into the Tier IV Tour event, the Nordea Nordic Light Open in Helsinki, Finland.
Not putting the opportunity to waste, Vera defeated 2002 runner-up Denisa Chladkova in the second round and went all the way to the semifinals, where she fell to talented Croatian Jelena Kostanic.
Having debuted on the WTA Singles Rankings just over a year ago at No.550, Vera is now No.143 with a bullet. Since the start of 2003 she has rocketed up 328 spots.
Another Russian gobbles up the competition in Turkey.
The signs have been there for a while now and on Sunday Vera Dushevina completed the journey from protégé to WTA Tour title winner with a crushing defeat over Czech Lucie Hradecka.
The 22-year-old from Khimki first popped up in 2002 when she beat Maria Sharapova to win the Wimbledon girls' singles title.
It's taken her longer than some to realise her potential on the women's tour, although the right-hander had made three finals before claiming her first WTA crown in Istanbul on Sunday.
Following runner-up spots at Eastbourne in 2005 and Stockholm in 2007 and 2008, the 5ft 10" blonde admitted she was less than confident when she arrived in Turkey but went on to drop just 16 games all week.
She took out local hope Yuliana Fedak 6-1, 6-4, Maria Elena Camerin 6-0, 6-1, third seed Anabel Medina Garrigues 6-1, 6-2, Swiss Timea Bacsinszky in the semis for the loss of just six games and Hradecka 6-0, 6-1 in the final.
Her form was so good that she now holds the record this year for the least amount of games lost on the way to a WTA Tour singles title.
"Before I came to Istanbul, I lost early in Portoroz, and I wasn't very excited about playing again this week," Dushevina said.
"I was upset, and I didn't come here thinking I could win. It was a tough tournament with a lot of top players, so I'm very happy I was able to win the title.
"I'm very happy to win my first Sony Ericsson WTA Tour singles title. I've played three finals before this so finally I have a title!"