The latest coaching novelty is that five-time Grand Slam champion Martina Hingis is now working full-time with Russian Anastasia Pavlychenkova, with whom she has been cooperating as part of the Patrick Mouratoglou Academy, but this is the first time that she’s her personal coach. Hingis and the world No.19 Pavlyuchenkova are currently in Moscow, preparing for this weekend's Russia vs. Slovakia Fed Cup World Group semifinal clash in Sports Center Krylatskoye.

The Hingis-Pavlyuchenkova cooperation is planned for the 2013 claycourt season. This month the 21-year-old Pavlyuchenkova won the Monterrey title, beating top seed Angelique Kerber in the final. (source: Tennis.com, photo via Beyond the Baseline)

Roberta Vinci entered the BNP Paribas Katowice Open final with two 6-1 6-o victories in the quarters and semis and in the title match against top seed Petra Kvitova she won a close first set before cruising through the second for a 7-6(2) 6-1 triumph. Now it's eight out of nine times that Vinci had won the semifinals and went all the way to the title.

In the first set Kvitova was twice just one game away from taking the set, but Vinci forced the tiebreak, won it handily and raced through the second set to clinch her eighth WTA title and rise from No.13 to No.12 in the rankings.

It was the first edition of the BNP Paribas Katowice Open, one of just two indoor clay events on the calendar, alongside Stuttgart. (photo: Neal Trousdale)

Petra Kvitova and Roberta Vinci, top two seeds, will face each other in the final of the BNP Paribas Katowice Open.

Top seed Petra Kvitova moved into the final with a 6-0 6-4 victory over Alexandra Cadantu that featured many long games. The Czech established a strong 6-0 4-0 lead, as Cadantu wasted 15 game points, but then in the 11th game Cadantu won her serve to love and went on to win three more games to level in the second set, before Kvitova eventually prevailed.

Second seed Roberta Vinci needed just 49 minutes to get past first-time WTA semifinalist Annika Beck 6-1 6-0. The Italian won her previous match, the quarterfinal against Karolina Pliskova, with the same score, losing just the first game of the encounter, and so when she built a 3-0 lead in the first set of the semi it was the 15th game in a row for her.

The Katowice Open final will be the second meeting of Kvitova and Vinci. The first one was at Wimbledon 2011, en route to Kvitova’s one and only Grand Slam title. (photos: © Neal Trousdale)

Already at the quarterfinal stage of the BNP Paribas Katowice Open seed No.1 Petra Kvitova and seed No.2 Roberta Vinci were the only seeded players left in the draw and they are still in, advancing to the semifinals with straight-set victories.

The world No.13 Vinci opened quarterfinal action, losing just one game, the first of the match, against Karolina Pliskova, the Czech who had taken out sixth seed Kaia Kanepi on her return from injury, but the encounter was more tense than the 6-1 6-0 score suggests. Vinci faced five break points and saved them all, while convering just 6 of the 20 she earned. Read more »

It is my pleasure to announce the winners of the third and last contest celebrating Women's Tennis Blog's sixth birthday – Djordje and Bróna are the lucky winners of signed photos of WTA stars Julia Goerges and Maria Kirilenko. Congratulations! I will contact you shortly to ask for your mailing address and to see who would like to receive which photo

I would like to thank all of you who participated and if you didn't win anything this time, don't worry, just stay with us and there will be many more contests on Women's Tennis Blog.

Now I'd like to round up the celebration by once again thanking Denise Cronwall for providing the $85 gift certificate for her designer tennis clothes, Emily Austin for giving a wonderful crystal necklace, John Bolan for sending me these two autographs and I would especially like to thank all of you who keep reading and supporting Women's Tennis Blog. I hope you enjoyed how I marked the sixth year of Women's Tennis Blog's existence.