Indy Telecom & Industrial Media

Yesterday, we were at the WTA Tour Cincinnati Women’s Open semi-finals here at Mason, OH.

The first singles match was between Akgul Amanmuradova of Uzbekistan and Akiko Morigami of Japan. While it did look like Amanmuradova was a shade more skilled, she gradually seemed to grow weaker as the match progressed and lost to Morigami. The final scoreboard read Amanmuradova-Morigami: 7-6, 4-6, 3-6.

The second singles match was between Sania Mirza of India and Anna Chakvetadze of Russia. While Sania was seeded #3 and ranked #38, Anna was seeded #1 and ranked #8.

Sania won the toss and elected to receive — which made sense as the game progressed because Sania did tend to have a lot more faults and hit the net a lot more often than Anna did. So, she was indeed better off receiving rather than serving.

Sania did play a decent game, but unfortunately she lost to Anna in the end. The final scoreboard read Chakvetadze-Mirza: 6-2, 5-7, 6-3.

Unquestionably, Anna was the better player — she seemed more talented and it looked like she was making Sania run every which way on the court. Also interesting was the fact that Sania’s serves were nowhere as fast as Anna’s and she had far fewer aces than Anna. She also seemed to have a much better temperament than Sania, who seemed to question half the decisions the referee was making.

Right after she lost the match, Sania threw her racquet on the ground and stomped off. She seemed rather grumpy, and in fact refused to even sign autographs for anyone.

While I went there supporting Sania, I was rather shocked to see her behaviour – true, she’s a human being too and she has emotions, but her attitude and game-play was probably the worst of the four that I had seen playing that day.

At the end of the day, I think Anna Chakvetadze just earned herself a new fan. Besides, she’s way prettier, too. =)

And oh, here are some more pictures from the tournament for those who are interested.

Update: Anna Chakvetadze won the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour singles title of the year here in Cincinnati, while Bethanie Mattek  and Sania Mirza won the doubles.