Davenport Wins Second Amelia Island Title
AMELIA ISLAND, FL - Lindsay Davenport won the Bausch & Lomb Championships for
the second time in her career on Sunday, defeating Amelie Mauresmo in the
final at Amelia Island.
Davenport, also the champion at Amelia Island in 1997, picked up her 40th
career title with a 64 64 victory against Mauresmo. By winning her 40th title,
Davenport became only the 10th player in the Open Era to capture that many
titles and ties Martina Hingis for ninth place.
"Today was the best match I've played the whole tournament,"
Davenport said. "I was a little surprised to be able to win my first
tournament on clay. It's a big boost for me going into the clay court season."
The match, which lasted 1 hour, 18 minutes, saw Davenport jump out to a 5-1
first set lead before Mauresmo broke once and held twice for 5-4. The second
set mirrored the first with Davenport again marching out to a big lead - this
time 5-2 - before Mauresmo again broke and held serve to make it 5-4 before
Davenport served out the match.
"I came out with the game plan of trying to be aggressive and dictating the
points and not getting into a lot of long rallies," Davenport said.
"And I thought I did that fairly well. You know, whenever I got a short ball,
I would hit it deep and try to keep her on the run.
"I tried to mix up my serve and go for a lot sometimes and go for less
sometimes. I thought it was fairly consistent today."
Davenport has now contest 73 career finals, with two of those 40 titles
coming at the Amelia Island Plantation. En route to hoisting the trophy,
Davenport defeated qualifier Tian Tian Sun, Alicia Molik, No.9 seed
Paola Suarez and a tough three-set battle with No.7 seed Nadia Petrova before
defeating Mauresmo.
Davenport, who improved to 20-2 on the year, also eclipsed another milestone
by reaching the final, becoming only the fourth place in the Open Era to
accumulate more than $17 million in earnings. She joins Steffi Graf, Martina
Navratilova and Martina Hingis as the only players to accomplish the feat.
The victory for Davenport was extra special after coming so close last year as
runner-up to Elena Dementieva. Davenport was in control of that match at a
set and 4-2 in the second before Dementieva rallied to overcome a large
deficit to win her first career title.
Mauresmo, who was playing this week after a nine-week layoff due to a back
injury she sustained at the Australian Open, lost for only the second time
this year. After her dramatic victory against World No.1 Justine
Henin-Hardenne in the semifinals, Mauresmo fell just one win short of picking
up win No.300 for her career.
"She played some good tennis," Mauresmo said. "Very aggresive. She did not
let me play my game and do what I wanted to do. It's always tough to recover
when you haven't played for a couple of months. That's just the way it is.
"Overall, this was a very good comeback for me. I'm just a little bit
disappointed. This kind of week is good. I just want to keep improving
my game and working hard and trying to come back to the level where i was
before the injury."
The 2001 champion, Mauresmo falls to 10-11 in career finals. She was looking
for her first WTA Tour singles title since winning Philadelphia last October.
Despite Davenport's victory, Mauresmo will stay at No.3 in the World on
Monday's WTA Rankings with Davenport at a close No.4.
In doubles, the Tour may have switched surfaces in the last week, but that
didn't change the winning ways of Nadia Petrova and Meghann Shaughnessy, who
won their second title in as many weeks. The unseeded duo won their third
title as a team with a 36 62 75 victory against Myriam Casanova and Alicia
Molik.
Also for the second straight week, Petrova and Shaughnessy took out the top
seeded tandem of Virginia Ruano Pascual and Paola Suarez - this time in the
semifinals.
Petrova and Shaughnessy improve to 19-5 in doubles this year as each won
their sixth career doubles title.
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