After winning her biggest career title last week in Tokyo, 30-year-old Nadia Petrova assured us that big tennis goals are still ahead of her, but the following week she’s ran out of steam against home favorite Li Na at the China Open and lost 6-1 6-2 in the second round, her first loss to the Chinese in their seven meetings. Besides the tough opponent that Li is, fatigue and a slight leg injury took the better of Petrova.

Petrova’s Tokyo final opponent, seed No.3 Agnieszka Radwanska in Beijing, who was defending her title in Tokyo last week and is doing the same this week, advanced to the third round with a 6-2 6-3 win over Zhang Shuai.

Seeds No.1 Victoria Azarenka, No.5 Angelique Kerber, No.9 Marion Bartoli and No.10 Caroline Wozniacki all advanced, while No.8 Samantha Stosur lost to Julia Goerges 7-6(2) 4-6 7-5. (photo: © Neal Trousdale)

For the first time in her long career Nadia Petrova beat three Top 10 players in one tournament and won her 12th and most valuable WTA title by ousting Agnieszka Radwanska in the final of the Toray Pan Pacific Open in Tokyo.

To make the victory even bigger, Petrova not only overcame tough matches (a three-hour battle against Petra Martic in the third round, a 6-4 4-1 deficit against Sara Errani in the quarterfinals, Grand Slam champion Samantha Stosur in the semis, and finally world No.3 Agnieszka Radwanska), but also a nagging back injury that forced her to withdraw from Seoul last week.

After storming through the first set in the title match against defending champion Radwanska 6-0, Petrova felt flat and lost the second set 6-1. At 4-3 for Petrova in the third set, Radwanska was 40-30 up on her serve, but two double faults cost her the game and soon after the match. Final score: 6-0 1-6 6-3.

The 30-year-old Petrova started her professional career 13 years ago, in 1999, but she still has the drive and ambition for greater heights:

There are a few players who have won Grand Slams after 30, and I feel like I don't want to walk away from tennis without accomplishing the same.

(source: WTA Tour, photo: © Neal Trousdale)

What a lovely occasion to add doubles specialist Liezel Huber and her husband Tony Huber to our series of WTA Players and their Boyfriends/Husbands – they became parents, adopting a baby boy, Joshua Jacob, who was born early morning on Thursday, September 27.

Liezel and Tony have been married for 12 years. Their wedding took place on February 19, 2000, in Durban, South Africa, Liezel's birthplace which she left at the age of 15 to follow her dream of becoming a tennis player. She came to Van der Meer’s tennis academy in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina and there she met Tony, who started coaching her full time in 1999. Liezel became American citizen on July 25, 2007. (photo via WhatsUpUsana)

Nadia Petrova reached the Toray Pan Pacific Open final by overpowering Samantha Stosur 6-4 6-2. Petrova's first serve percentage was just 36%, but she hit nine aces and won 17 of 20 points on her first serve. Moreover, she faced no break points until the last game of the match when she saved all the three. Stosur, who made a string of unforced errors, had to take a medical timeout due to an abdominal injury.

Defending champion Agnieszka Radwanska joined Petrova in the final with a rapid 6-1 6-1 win over Angelique Kerber. The third-seeded Radwanska was in absolute charge of the semifinal against one of the most solid players of the season, recording 20 winners to just four unforced errors. Kerber, fifth seed in Tokyo, is actually the most prolific WTA player this year when it comes to the number of match wins (58), but her 34 unforced errors made her disappear against Radwanska. Read more »

Semifinals are set at the Toray Pan Pacific Open in Tokyo: Nadia Petrova vs. Sam Stosur and Angelique Kerber vs. Agnieszka Radwanska.

Nadia Petrova was the first to advance, with a massive 3-6 7-5 6-3 win over Sara Errani in two hours and 36 minutes. The Russian actually won one point less than her opponent in the tense match (101 to Errani's 102), but saved 7 of 12 break points, while Errani saved 7 of 13.

The encounter of Maria Sharapova and Sam Stosur followed. Both started strongly, with 100% of first serves won up to 2-2 40-15 for Stosur in the first set. However, there was an exchange of breaks for 4-4 and it was Stosur who held her serve then and broke Sharapova again in the end, for a perfect conversion of break points and 6-4. Read more »

An upset is always lurking when Lucie Safarova is in the game, and given her walkover relaxation in the second-round and Maria Sharapova’s hard labor against qualifier Heather Watson to reach the third round, the encounter of the Czech and the Russian promised a close battle. In the end, favorite Sharapova did advance, this time in not more than an hour and 45 minutes, 6-2 7-6(5), but only after surviving a comeback of 0-3 to 6-5 on the side of Safarova in the second set.

In the quarterfinals, the second-seeded Sharapova will face eighth seed Samantha Stosur, who beat Dominika Cibulkova 6-4 7-5. As for the other members of the final eight, Sara Errani won 12 of the last 15 games to recover from 3-6 0-1 and defeat Marion Bartoli 3-6 6-2 6-2. Her next opponent will be Nadia Petrova, who stopped Petra Martic, the conqueror of Petra Kvitova.

Top seed Victoria Azarenka beat Roberta Vinci 6-4 6-2 and will play Angelique Kerber, who lost just two games against Urszula Radwanska, 6-1 6-1. Agnieszka Radwanska is through to the quarters, with a 6-4 6-3 win over Jamie Hampton, while Caroline Wozniacki edged Li Na, who committed 76 unforced errors, 4-6 6-3 6-4. (photo: Tennis Buzz)

World No.78 Heather Watson came through qualifying, upset Sabine Lisicki 6-4 7-6(3) in the first round of the Toray Pan Pacific Open and came very close to upsetting the 2009 champion Maria Sharapova in the second round, but the second-seeded Russian overcame 67 unforced errors and 14 double faults to win 6-7(7) 6-3 6-4 in three hours and nine minutes. The previous meeting of the two, last year at the US Open, was also a three-setter.

The exhausting match featured 14 breaks of serve. In the marathon first set, Watson came from a break down twice, while even in the tiebreak she was down, 3-0, and saved set points.

Sharapova holds the Tokyo tournament close to her heart since it was her first title in her resurgent year after shoulder injury. In the third round she will face tricky seed No.16 Lucie Safarova, who received a walkover when Klara Zakopalova withdrew with a left wrist injury. (via: BBC, photo: © Neal Trousdale)

Both Radwanska sisters are enjoying the best years of their careers, and even though the older Agnieszka has been a fixture in the Top 10 for years and is now enjoying her best year so far with three WTA titles and a Grand Slam final, the 21-year-old Urszula is approaching the heights.

Before Tokyo, at back-to-back International-level tournaments in Tashkent and Guangzhou, Urszula, currently at a career-high No.36 ranking, reached the semifinals, which she lost to eventual champions, and this week at the $2,168,400 Tokyo she’s already earned twice as much money and the same number of points as in each of the International events by beating seed No.11 and former No.1 Ana Ivanovic in the second round. Ivanovic was just two games away from victory, but lost eight of the next 10 games and fell to Urszula 3-6 6-4 6-2, piling up a total of 12 double faults.

Fifth seed Angelique Kerber, who beat Japanese No.1 Ayumi Morita 6-3 6-4, is Urszula’s opponent in the third round. (photo: sr_cranks)