By Paul Martinez
INDIAN WELLS, Calif. What a difference
a year makes. Last year at the Pacific Life Open, Maria Sharapova suffered
the worst loss of her career in losing 6-0, 6-0 to Lindsay Davenport in the
semifinals. Soon after, the 18-year-old tuned and tightened up her game,
enough to knock Davenport out of the No.1 rank and take it over for
a while.
On Saturday she banished any remaining
demons into the breezy desert air with a 6-1, 6-2 win over fellow countrywoman
and No. 4 seed Elena Dementieva. Sharapova, the tournament No.3 seed, had
made the final by way of a victory early Friday afternoon over resurgent
Martina Hingis, and in doing so became the first Russian to gain the Pacific
Life Open final.
A few hours after that match,
Dementieva had become the second Russian ever to make the Indian Wells
final by defeating top seed Justine Henin Hardenne, who appeared to pull
up with injury late in the second set. Dementieva fought off two match points
and her own double-fault demons en route to a three set win.
That was not the only difficult
match for Dementieva. In her earlier rounds she had had three-setters against
Ana Ivanovic, Sania Mirza and Anastasiya Yakimova in accumulating more than
17 hours of time on court.
The Pacific Life Open title is
Sharapova's first title of the year and the 11th in her career. Her cut of
the $2,100,000 purse was $332,000. Dementieva received $163,000 for her runner
up effort.
Tournament Info:
The Pacific Life Open
began Monday, March 6 with the start of the women's qualifying draw. The
women's main draw and men's qualifying draw began on Wednesday, March 8 and
the men's main draw began on Friday, March 10. The tournament ran through
Sunday, March 19.
The first major combined tennis
event of the season on U.S. soil, the Pacific Life Open was held March 6-19,
2006 at the Indian Wells Tennis Garden in Indian Wells, Calif. In 2005 more
than 280,000 fans attended, making it the fifth largest tennis tournament
in the world.
Previously:
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