Today, France’s Amelie Mauresmo demonstrated that writing her tennis obituary might be premature. Mauresmo defeated Russian Elena Dementieva in the finals of the Open GDF Suez in Paris 7-6, 2-6, 6-4 to capture her 25th trophy and her first in two years.
Off the bat, Mauresmo went down a break after netting a volley. Luckily, with a double fault, Mauresmo got a break point and delivered when Dementieva’s backhand crosscourt went long. After the players traded breaks again; at two all, Dementieva secured another break with a forehand crosscourt winner and then consolidated with a love game for 4-2. The next game was pivotal as Mauresmo saved a break point and held for 3-4. As Dementieva served for the set at 5-4, Mauresmo’s versatility, particularly on the backhand, forced errors from her opponent, allowing her to break. The set went to a tiebreak. With a forehand winner, Dementieva had set point; but it vanished when she was unable to pass Mauresmo at net. Subsequently, Amelie, herself, arrived at set point when Dementieva’s crosscourt forehand found the bottom of the net. Then, Amelie handcuffed Elena with a great body serve to wrap up the set after 1 hour and 14 minutes.
With a double fault and a few errors from Dementieva, Mauresmo had the early break in the second set. However, after being ahead 30-0, Amelie made some rare backhand errors to relinquish her lead. After appearing to be on her way to an easy hold at 40-15, Mauresmo misfired on the backhand again and mistimed a ball which ended up going over her racket giving Dementieva the winner and a service break. At 2-5, Mauresmo double faulted to hand Dementieva set point and double faulted anew to gift her the set.