More than ten years after turning pro, Russian world No.68 Elena Vesnina managed to win her maiden WTA title in her seventh career final that happened at the Moorilla Hobart International against German defending champion Mona Barthel.

"It finally worked out for me. I've been waiting for this for a long time," said the 26-year-old Vesnina, whose trophies had been restricted to doubles competition, winning eight doubles titles and reaching the ranking of No.7.

Actually, Vesnina can pride herself on the highest singles ranking of No.22 and she's been a well-known name in the tennis world for years, but somehow going all the way to the singles title used to be out of her reach. Now she can finally be at piece.

Before beating Barthel 6-3 6-4 in the Hobart final, Vesnina went past Silvia Soler-Espinosa in the first round, fourth seed Yaroslava Shvedova in the second, Jarmila Gajdosova in the quarters and eighth seed Sloane Stephens in the semifinals.

Barthel will now crack the Top 30. I'd like to mention that Barthel's on-court clothes are designs of Denise Cronwall and the dress you can see below the cut is from the 2013 collection. I really admire Denise's work and soon she should send me a bunch of clothing items, both old and new, for review! Read more »

In life and in tennis we like to recognize some patterns and predict future based on current facts. Our stats analyst Omair made sure to present us the historical patterns of the Australian part of the season and the chances of an Australian Open tune-up tournament winner to lift the trophy at the Australian Open. You'll see that the Sydney winner is the most likely, which was the case this year with Victoria Azarenka.

A few days before the Australian Open I found some interesting things regarding the winners of the Australian Open warm-up events and their performance at the Australian Open that year. There are four warm-up events which pave the way for the players to get into some form for the first Grand Slam of the year:

• Brisbane
• Auckland
• Hobart
• Sydney

Let's have a look at how well this year's winners performed at the Australian Open and how they compared to the winners of previous years and their performances at the Australian Open that year. Please note that for this article I used the results of Sydney and Auckland from 1988 onwards, since it was from 1988 that all the players played from the first round of the 128 player draw for the Grand Slam.

BRISBANE

• Best Australian Open result in the respective year: quarterfinals
• 2012: Kaia Kanepi won Brisbane and lost in the second round of the Australian Open

The Brisbane tournament started way back in 1997, and was known as Gold Coast back then. The name of the tournament was changed in 2009 to the Brisbane International. This year the Brisbane event went Premier. The first ever winner of the tournament back in 1997 was Elena Likhovtseva who defeated Ai Sugiyama in the final. Elena Likhovtseva could not carry on the momentum to the Australian Open and lost in the first round, while Sugiyama lost in the second round of the Australian Open that year.

The best result a Brisbane winner so far had at the Australian Open was a quarterfinal showing. Three players achieved that feat. Venus Williams was the first Brisbane player to reach the Australian Open quarterfinal back in 2002 when she won the Brisbane event. Venus lost to 8th-seeded Monica Seles in three sets. Patty Schnyder in 2005 and Petra Kvitova in 2011 followed in the footsteps of Venus Willaims and went on to reach the quarterfinals of the Australian Open after winning the event in the respective years. Schnyder lost in three sets to 19th-seeded Nathalie Dechy, while Kvitova lost in straight sets to second-seeded Vera Zvonareva.

Kaia Kanepi won the Brisbane event this year. Based on the history of the Brisbane winners and their performance at the Australian Open, Kanepi's chances of making it out the second round were 67%.

Twice in the tournament's 15-year history has the Brisbane winner lost in the second round, Kanepi with her second round showing this year made it thrice in the 16-year history of the tournament. Many dubbed Kanepi as the dark horse for the Australian Open after her strong showing at the Brisbane event, however, Kanepi could not carry that momentum and fell victim of Ekaterina Makarova, who would go on to crush Serena Williams, five-time Australian Open champion, in the fourth round.

Brisbane winner has yet to move beyond the quarterfinal stage of the Australian Open, and with the event going Premier this year, this statistic will for sure change in the years to come. Although, I had hoped that this statistic will change this year since the field at Brisbane was very strong with the likes of Kim Clijsters, Serena Williams, Samantha Stosur.

AUCKLAND

• Best Australian Open result in the respective year: semifinals
• 2012: Zheng Jie won Auckland and lost in the fourth round of the Australian Open Read more »

Seeds number two, four and five, one of them defending champion Jarmila Gajdosova, were all the victims of Mona Barthel during her run to her first career final at the Moorilla Hobart International. But the amazing German didn't leave the city without completing the last touch and finished the tournament by upsetting top seed Yanina Wickmayer with an impressive 6-1 6-2 score.

Being a qualifier, Barthel compiled eight match wins on her title quest. The defeated names include: Valeria Savinykh, Olga Govortsova, Nina Bratchikova, Romina Oprandi, Anabel Medina Garrigues, Jarmila Gajdosova, Angelique Kerber, and finally Yanina Wickmayer. The last qualifier to win a WTA title before Barthel was Tamira Paszek at Quebec City in September 2010.

The world No.64 Barthel, who came to Hobart with only six main draw victories in her life, is projected to make a Top 50 debut.

Prior to Hobart, Barthel played Auckland where she defeated former world No.4 Jelena Dokic in the first round and lost to Sabine Lisicki 7-6(3) 3-6 6-3 afterwards. The upcoming Australian Open will be her first main draw appearance at the event and her opening opponent will be Anne Keothavong. (photo via Moorilla Hobart International)

We were all happy to welcome Anna Chakvetadze back on the tennis courts this week at the Hobart International, and seeing her win two matches, her first victories since April, made us root for her even more. However, the Russian has joined dozens of WTA players that are already injured this early January and retired from her quarterfinal against Shahar Peer with a severe left leg cramp.

After ousting third seed Monica Niculescu 6-0 6-4 and Tsvetana Pironkova 6-3 6-2, the 24-year-old Chakvetadze won the first set 6-4 against the sixth-seeded Peer, but even during that set she started experiencing the injury. Chakvetadze then lost the second set and retired after dropping serve initially in the decider at the score 4-6 6-4 1-0.

Chakvetadze was once No.5 in the women's standings but the horrifying robbery, string of injuries and illness dragged her down to her current 234th position in the WTA rankings. Hobart was the Russian’s first tournament since Wimbledon in June. During her golden career year of 2007, Chakvetadze won four WTA titles, including Hobart, and played the quarterfinals of the Australian Open. (photo: © Neal Trousdale)

Anna Chakvetadze has recently become engaged in politics and she’s already been voted the sexiest woman in the field. On top of that, we’re receiving good news regarding her tennis career – the 24-year-old will play the Moorilla Hobart International tournament in January 2012.

Russian internet users were asked to vote for a Russian politician they find the sexiest and Chakvetadze took the honor, beating some all-time favorites on the way.

When news of Chakvetadze's political engagement surfaced in September it made us question her further interest in tennis, as she already hadn’t played much during the 2011 season due to health problems. However, Chakvetadze is returning to tennis in a month, at the Hobart tournament she won in 2007, the brightest year of her career, when she reached her career-high ranking of No.5 and won four WTA titles.

In the entire 2011 the Russian played just 14 matches and won only six of them. She's currently No.231.

Additional info: On December 4 there were State Duma elections and Chakvetadze's Right Cause Party did not cross the 5% election threshold for a seat in the Parliament. (photo: Ralf Reinecke)