The finals of the WTA Qatar Airways Tournament of Champions saw the unbeaten leaders of both groups take to the court on Sunday evening in Sofia – Caroline Wozniacki, seeded 1 and Nadia Petrova, seeded 2 – a tournament director’s dream final. However, the match turned out to be one sided as the Russian player stormed to a 6-2 6-1 victory.
Petrova got the measure of the Wozniaki game early on and ran up a 5-1 lead, but it took her a half hour, showing how hard fought each point was. The tenacious Dane held her serve to get another game on the scoreboard at 2-5, but Petrova served out the set at 6-2 in 50 minutes. Wozniacki opened the second set but the Russian immediately broke and ran up a 4-0 lead before Wozniack got on the scoreboard. That was her last shout of the season, as Petrova reeled off the last two games to take the set 6-1 and the match in less than one and a half hours.
It was good to see Petrova once more bringing her A game to her most recent tournaments (such as winning the Toray Pan Pacific in Japan in September), thus doing very well and climbing the rankings ladder once again. She is a worthy champion of this tournament and it is hoped to see more great play from this 30 year old veteran in the 2013 season.
To see all our predictions for upcoming matches, based on our machine learning model analysing results since 1960, see our tennis predictions page here.
