Petra Kvitova earned her first WTA title in six months and the tenth in her career by winning the battle against Sara Errani. Before last week's Doha, Kvitova hadn't won back-to-back matches since the 2012 US Open, but after reaching the quarterfinals at the Qatar Total Open, the Czech was victorious five matches in a row to claim the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships title.

The final had big momentum swings, but Kvitova's was the closing one and she won the match 6-2 1-6 6-1. After opening the encounter with a 6-2 1-0 lead, Kvitova lost six straight games to Errani, but in the third set she took charge again and finished the match by grabbing five consecutive games.

In the first round Kvitova routed Daniela Hantuchova 6-2 6-1, then overcame Ana Ivanovic 7-5 7-6(1) in the second round, beat third seed Agnieszka Radwanska in the quarterfinals 6-2 6-4, eighth seed Caroline Wozniacki 6-3 6-4 in the semis, and finally Errani to increase her perfect record against the Italian to 4-0. (photo: © Neal Trousdale)

The fight for the prestigious Dubai title and $442,198 in prize money will feature fifth seed Sara Errani and sixth seed Petra Kvitova.

Errani got past her good friend and doubles partner Roberta Vinci, who reached the semifinals with wins over two-time Grand Slam champion Svetlana Kuznetsova and two current Top 10 players, Angelique Kerber and Sam Stosur, one of whom is also a Grand Slam champion. Errani beat her fellow Italian 6-3 6-3 in a match that featured 11 breaks of serve in those 18 games. Vinci has now lost the last five singles meetings against her doubles partner.

In the other Friday's semifinal, Petra Kvitova was better than former world No.1 Caroline Wozniacki, 6-3 6-4. This is a big success for the 2011 Wimbledon champion Kvitova, who had failed to win more than two matches at any tournament this year. After comfortably taking the first set, Kvitova gave away her serve in the fifth game of the second set to trail 2-3, but broke back immediately and then again to move into the final of the mini major, as she called the Dubai Duty Free Championships.

Kvitova has won all three of her matches against Errani so far, in straight sets, and is the favorite for the title at the $2,000,000 event. (photos: © Neal Trousdale)

Just as we said that the Dubai draw opened up for titleholder Agnieszka Radwanska with withdrawals of Victoria Azarenka and Serena Williams, the Pole went out to Petra Kvitova 6-2 6-4 in the quarterfinals, who has now recorded her first Top 5 win since her Wimbledon-winning 2011 season. Despite producing 38 unforced errors to 37 winners, Kvitova was better than Radwanska, whose numbers were modest six winners to five unforced errors. In the semifinals, the sixth-seeded Kvitova will play eighth seed Caroline Wozniacki, who battled past Marion Bartoli 4-6 6-1 6-4. The semifinal will be a clash of Top 2 players from the WTA rankings at the end of 2011.

The other Dubai semifinal will feature members of the top-ranked doubles pairing, Sara Errani and Roberta Vinci. The fifth-seeded Errani, who is 4-2 all-time against Vinci in singles, recovered from suffering a second-set bagel to defeat Nadia Petrova 6-4 0-6 6-3, while Vinci is enjoying one of the best weeks of her career, having recorded two straight Top 10 victories: against world No.6 Angelique Kerber on Wednesday and today against world No.9 Samantha Stosur 6-2 6-4. (photo: Ralf Reinecke)

After pretty much a year of Victoria Azarenka's reign on the top of the rankings (it was interrupted by Maria Sharapova for four weeks in the summer of 2012), women's tennis has a new No.1 – Serena Williams. Of course, not entirely new, Serena is on the top spot for the sixth time in her career and more than ten years after she first claimed it. As if she lacked historic accomplishments and awe-inspiring results, at the age of 31, Serena became the oldest female to become a No.1 since the computer rankings were introduced. Read more »

Thursday's action at the Qatar Total Open was shaping up the quarterfinals and all the seeded players advanced, except in one match that was a clash of two seeds, in which the higher seed prevailed when No.7 Petra Kvitova took out No.11 Nadia Petrova after dropping the first set and coming back from behind in both the remaining sets to finally win 4-6 6-4 6-3.

Kvitova is now in an intimidating position, finding herself between Serena Williams and the 31-year-old American's No.1 ranking – if Serena beats Kvitova in the quarterfinals, she will get back to the top of the WTA standings and become the oldest player ever to be No.1. Serena has won 58 of her last 61 matches and today she stormed past Urszula Radwanska 6-0 6-3 in just 57 minutes.

The other quarterfinal in the bottom half of the draw will be between good friends Agnieszka Radwanska and Caroline Wozniacki. By beating Ana Ivanovic 6-1 7-6(6), even though the Serb was serving for the second set, Radwanska earned her 15th win of the season, which makes her the leader in that department. Wozniacki worked hard to eliminate Mona Barthel 7-6(6) 6-3, the German who's been making a big name for herself, especially this season.

In the top half of the draw, world No.1 Victoria Azarenka recorded her sixth career double bagel, ousting Christina McHale, and is to face Sara Errani, who won a marathon against Daniela Hantuchova 7-5 5-7 6-2. We are also having a Maria Sharapova vs. Samantha Stosur quarterfinal. Sharapova was better than Klara Zakopalova 6-3 6-3, while Stosur stopped the run of Svetlana Kuznetsova 6-4 7-5. (photos: © Neal Trousdale)