Australian world No.55 Jarmila Groth defeated Russian world No.103 Alla Kudryavtseva in the Landsky Lighting Guangzhou International Women's Open final for her first WTA title. The following article is of my blogging friend John Bolan, who is friends with Alla, so I thought it would be nice to share his analysis of the final.

Alla Kudryavtseva had a great run at the Guangzhou WTA tournament before dropping the final to Jarka Groth, the number 2 Australian. Alla nevertheless added 200 points to her ranking. She will jump back into the top 80 in women's tennis. This continues her success in Chinese tournaments after last year's doubles finals appearance in the China Open. This year Alla was named to her country's powerful Fed Cup team for the first time.

Kudryavtseva dropped the first set 6-1 without much of a fight in less than 30 minutes. The second set was a different story. Alla led 4 games to 3 in a tightly played match before losing 6-4. Groth hit 11 aces in the match which was the big difference in the statistics.

Jarka has been playing great tennis and will move into the top 50 on Monday when the new rankings will be released. This will be a new career high ranking for her. She won $37,000 and a chance to play in the Bali Tournament of Champions. (photo via Guangzhou Open)

Top seed Jarmila Groth and unseeded Alla Kudryavtseva will play their first WTA final at the $220,000 Landsky Lighting Guangzhou International Women's Open in China. They both had quick victories in their semifinals. Groth beat Edina Gallovits 6-0 6-1 in 38 minutes, while Kudryavtseva bageled Zhang Shuai in the first set and won the second set 6-4 to win the match in 64 minutes.

China’s Zhang was the one who defeated probably the biggest name of the tournament, Sania Mirza, in the quarterfinals. Mirza, once ranked 27th in the world, has fallen out of the Top 100, but prior to falling to Zhang, Mirza had a winning streak of three qualifying and one main draw match at the US Open and two matches at Guangzhou.

Groth is expected to crack the Top 50 for the first time. Kudryavtseva, on the other hand, can celebrate not only her first final, but also her semifinal appearance, as her best Tour finishes before this week were five quarterfinals. Groth and Kudryavtseva played each other two times so far, and each won one match, but their last meeting was more than two years ago. (photos: © Neal Trousdale)

Our avid reader Sarah recently entered Wilson's "Win a hit with Juan Martin Del Potro" Contest on Facebook where you were supposed to take a photo of yourself playing with a new Wilson® BLX tennis racquet. Sarah was determined to come up with the most original idea, and although she didn’t win the grand prize her work deserves a lot of appreciation and so I’m sharing her photos with you.

You know how fascinated I am with the tennis fashion of the past. Sarah did a photoshoot with an 1890s tennis theme and I have to say her idea was very original and she carried it out great. Sarah took the photos at a place called Sherwood Country Club in Thousand Oaks, CA. She wanted a grass court because it best fitted with the theme. She did a lot of research before the shoot on what the players wore in those days. She looked at numerous photos of Suzanne Lenglen and Helen Wills Moody and did her best to copy that style and look of play.

Besides Sarah, the credit has to be given to her mother Judith Anderson who took these photos. She is a professional photographer.

Dear readers,

This is a short post aimed at helping out one of our faithful readers Emily and spreading the word about her new tennis blog called WTA Tour Insight. Emily is currently in the first year of studying journalism and for one of her assessments she had to create some sort of publication. Inspired by my work here at Women’s Tennis Blog, which she visits every day, Emily decided to make a blog about women’s tennis.

Emily’s goal is to keep readers up to date with the latest WTA news, including frequent score updates, and with off-court news. She’s planning to continue blogging after her studies are concluded.

Check out WTA Tour Insight and why not leave a comment or some sort of advice for Emily.

Good luck with your studies, Emily, and I hope I was helpful!

Best regards,

Marija

Dear readers,

Tennis season has no summer holidays but Women's Tennis Blog does haha and here's just a short note that posting will be slower in the next two weeks as I will be relaxing in the Greek sun. Yay! I got the vacation for free actually, and who could resist that!

Of course, I made sure not to leave you empty-handed, so I prepared a number of posts in advance. There will be no latest news apparently, but there will be some interesting stuff concerning women's tennis players.

All your emails and questions will be answered when I come back.

Kisses,

Marija

The WTA Tour has a new sponsor – a Chinese company called Peak that is not really known outside of the country. Peak will have a five-year deal with the Tour, worth seven figures annually. As of this summer, they will be the Tour's official shoe and apparel partner in Asia-Pacific.

Under the deal, Peak will receive licensing and merchandising rights to develop a co-branded WTA-Peak line of apparel; will become the official shoe and apparel partner of a series of Tour events in the Asia-Pacific region; will become a partner of the Tour’s China tennis festivals; and will develop a player apparel program.

The aim of the brand is to boost its image at home and attract the Chinese middle class which has a growing interest in leisure activities and plenty of pocket money, while the Tour aims to increase its exposure in the region. Peak wants to show Chinese people that national brands are just as cool as the foreign ones.

"Right now we're learning from Nike. We hope one day we can catch up and surpass Nike, of course that is our goal," said 33-year-old Peak CEO Jim Xu. "But we're different because we know China better than Nike, we have products that are better suited to the Chinese market … We can give consumers another choice."

PEAK stands for Passion, Evolution, Achievement and Knowledge. (source: The New York Times, WTA Tour)

Dear readers,

One more successful competition on Women's Tennis Blog has been concluded and I'm happy to announce that the winners of Anastasia's Yoga for Tennis DVDs are our regular readers and commentators Bróna and LuLinQa (randomly chosen). They will each get a set of three DVDs with yoga exercises specially selected for the needs of tennis players.

I hope that I will soon have an opportunity to organize another competition, and that those of you who still haven't been so lucky will have another chance.

A big thanks to all of you who participated, and of course to Anastasia for providing me with the DVDs for my readers.

Marija

Dear readers,

It's been awhile since our last competition on Women's Tennis Blog, and I'm glad to announce that the time has come for you to have a chance to win a nice prize again. This time yoga-for-tennis expert Anastasia provided us with two packages of three DVDs with her showing yoga exercises intended to improve your tennis game and your overall health. These exercises were featured in TENNIS Magazine and on Tennis Channel.

Two readers will be awarded with a set of three DVDs: 60-minute long Yoga for Great Tennis, 45-minute long Yoga for Tennis Elbow and 45-minute long Easy Power and Flexibility for Tennis. Read more »