Ekaterina Alexandrova made friends with Dutch grass

The winner of the Libema Open, the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) 250 tournament with a prize fund of $225,000 that ended in ‘s-Hertogenbosch, Holland, for the second year in a row was Russian Ekaterina Aleksandrova, who outplayed her compatriot Veronika Kudermetova in the third game tie-break final. This is the fourth title in Alexandrova’s career. According to the results of last week, she rose from 26th place in the world ranking to 22nd.

The opening tournaments of the grass season rarely end with the victories of players from the top ten world classifications. In mid-June, they usually take a short break and recover after the French Open, so those who are in the rankings a little lower get a good chance to excel. This, however, requires high-quality aggressive play, which allows you to successfully operate on the grass. Ekaterina Alexandrova and Veronika Kudermetova just know how to play this. They have almost the same trump cards – a good serve, a solid reception, attacking blows from the back line that are effective on fast surfaces, and no one doubts that they are able to win tournaments of the 250 category for a long time. Alexandrova had three titles before, and Kudermetova had one, besides, thanks to reaching the quarterfinals of last year’s Roland Garros, she finished the previous season at the rank of the ninth racket of the world. Therefore, it is not surprising that the Russian final was played at the only Dutch tournament in the WTA calendar, which, by the way, was a repetition of last year’s semi-final, which Alexandrova left.

On the way to Sunday’s meeting, both Russians did not lose a single set. Moreover, Kudermetova, seeded under the first number, spent less than five hours on the courts in four matches, and Alexandrova, who won in ‘s-Hertogenbosch last year, took 18 games in a row there. In such a situation, the chances of winning looked about equal. The debut of the match, the beginning of which was delayed by the organizers due to rain, was left to Kudermetova. Taking someone else’s serve twice and losing hers only once, she led – 4: 2, and then successfully completed the first game, which was interrupted for about an hour in the middle of the seventh game due to bad weather. In the second set, Alexandrova again won back the break made by her opponent in the fifth game, and with the score 4:4, Kudermetova had two break points that she could not use. Then the referee again had to announce a rain break, although it was already quite short, and after the resumption of the game, Kudermetova could not keep her serve, breaking into the net on the first set point, and the balance was restored in the final.

The third game was already without breaks, although in general Alexandrova still had a slight advantage. She missed one match point in the tenth game and two more in the twelfth, while Kudermetova had a single break point in the eleventh game. As a result, everything ended with a tie-break, which Alexandrova held much more stable. She left behind the third draw – one of the most spectacular in the match, and having led 4:2, she did not give her compatriot a single chance. As a result – 4:6, 6:4, 7:6 (7:3) in 2 hours 52 minutes.

Before Ekaterina Alexandrova, there was only one champion in the history of Libema Open who managed to win this tournament twice in a row – Tamarin Tanasugarn from Thailand, who won there in 2008 and 2009. After earning 280 ranking points (last year’s points burned out last Monday due to a shift in the tournament schedule) and almost €30,000 in prize money, the Russian won her fourth WTA title in six finals played. In addition, it will rise from 26th place in the ranking to 22nd, with a chance to return to the top twenty during the grass season.

In turn, Veronika Kudermetova, who received 180 points and €17.5 thousand, not only worsened her finals statistics – 1:5, but also missed the opportunity to be in the top ten again, changing 14th position to 13th . The next event for the two players will be the Bett1Open, a much larger 500 event featuring seven top 10 players starting Monday in Berlin. Theoretically, the finalists of ‘s-Hertogenbosch can meet there in the quarterfinals. True, Kudermetova needs to go to the 1/8 finals of the second racket of the world Arina Sobolenko, and Alexandrova will have to play in the first round with another Russian woman, Lyudmila Samsonova, who won in the German capital in 2021.

Evgeny Fedyakov