Only days after beating world number one Justine Henin and eight-time Grand Slam champion Serena Williams, Dinara Safina hoisted the biggest Sony Ericsson WTA Tour trophy of her career.
Safina, the thirteenth seed, defeated seventh seed Elena Dementieva 3-6, 6-2, 6-2 in the Qatar Telecom German Open final on Sunday.
“I hope I won’t wake up tomorrow and realize that this was just a dream,” said Safina after the match.
“Obviously, this has been the biggest success in my career and I still can’t believe I actually won Berlin and beat three Top 10 players in one week. Right now I am the happiest person on Earth but the problem there is I don’t have much time to enjoy it. Tomorrow morning I leave for Rome where everything starts again!”
Safina’s wins over world No.1 Justine Henin, world No.6 Serena Williams and world No.9 Elena Dementieva were her ninth, 10th and 11th career Top 10 wins.
She will now head to the Internazionali BNL d’Italia, where she is the fourteenth seed.
The Berlin doubles title was won by co-ranked number one stars Cara Black and Liezel Huber. Black and Huber defeated Nuria Llagostera Vives and Maria Jose Martínez Sánchez 3-6, 6-2, 10-2.
“It feels good to win our third title of the year, after Antwerp and Dubai,” said Black.
“Let’s just hope we can keep it up for a few more titles. Nuria and María played well and it just shows that there a couple of really good teams out there.”
Well done Dinara. I never saw that coming. When the draw came out I thought the tournament winner would be whoever got through the first quarter final in the top half of the draw. It turned out to be correct but, like most other people, I assumed it would be Justine or Serena.
[...] Safina played the best week of her career last week in Berlin, scoring three Top 10 victories over Justine Henin, Serena Williams, and Elena Dementieva on the way to her first Tier I title. [...]
That was fantastic! It isn’t often that someone knocks off the two big competitors and still wins the tournament. Talk about a hat trick…