| This has never happened in the history of Russian tennis. Four of our players reached the decisive matches at the ATP and WTA tournaments in one week, making a kind of “poker”. Moreover, one of the finals turned out to be purely Russian. We have already become accustomed to the fact that our girls began to play the title among themselves more and more often. However, this time men followed suit. At the ATP competition with a prize fund of 500 thousand dollars in China, the owner of the main prize was determined in a head-to-head duel between Mikhail Youzhny and Marat Safin.
The achievement of Svetlana Kuznetsova seems especially surprising. Usually, after such major victories as winning the US Open, tennis players take a break for at least a week or they experience a completely natural decline associated with fatigue and a busy schedule of games. Svetlana, without having time to properly celebrate her triumph in New York, hurried to go to the Indonesian island of Bali, where competitions were held with a total bonus amount of 225 thousand dollars. She considered it impossible to refuse previously accepted contractual obligations to the organizers, although in this situation no one would blame her.
In non-stop mode, Kuznetsova in Bali left Australian Samantha Stosur, local tennis player Angelica Vijaya out of action, and in the semi-finals she knocked out her compatriot Nadezhda Petrova from the fight. In this meeting she lost her only game at the tournament. In addition to her sporting successes, Svetlana managed to please her fans with a radically new image. Along with her friend and doubles partner, Spaniard Arantha Sanchez-Vicario, she rocked her hair with American-style braids and special inserts on Saturday night. In the singles final, Kuznetsova effortlessly defeated Marlene Weingartner (Germany) - 6:1, 6:4. Our girls have won the tournament in Bali for the third season in a row - Kuznetsova has now returned the title she won here in 2002, which went to Elena Dementieva 12 months ago.
Svetlana has the absolute best record among all Russians this season - she played in singles finals six times, winning three titles, and took part in decisive doubles matches ten times. From Bali, Kuznetsova heads to Beijing, where, following the men's tournament, the women's tournament starts on Monday. In the capital of China, the winner of the US Open is again “seeded” at number two. Yesterday in Beijing, due to bad weather, the start of the match between Safin and Yuzhny was greatly delayed. In principle, for Russian fans it was not so important who would win this derby. The main thing is that the Russian final was held in men's tournaments for the first time since 2001, when Safin beat Yevgeny Kafelnikov in Tashkent.
Igor Andreev also supported the initiative of his compatriots. Late yesterday evening Moscow time, he played the final match at the competition in Bucharest. The 20-year-old Muscovite's opponent was Argentine clay player Jose Acasuso. Ilya TRISVIATSKY
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