Zvonareva a shock Doha finalist

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DOHA: Vera Zvonareva, the last woman to qualify for the eight-player Sony Ericsson championships, continued her giant-killing run all the way to the final with her fourth major scalp on Saturday, ousting Elena Dementieva, the Olympic champion.

The 24-year-old Zvonareva, who has never won a major title, overcame Dementieva 7-6, (9/7), 3-6, 6-3 - only the second time in six attempts that she has beaten her better known compatriot.

It followed Zvonareva's other victories this week over the world number one Jelena Jankovic, the French Open champion Ana Ivanovic, and the former US Open champion Svetlana Kuznetsova to extend the finest run of her career.

Already certain of the first season-end top ten finish of her career, Zvonareva also extended the biggest pay cheque of her career to 715,000 dollars so far.

"I was tired after my last tournament," Zvonareva said of her appearance in the final in Linz last month. "But I've recovered well enough and I've felt good again here."

Remarkably for the player possessing the slightest build of any in this tournament, Zvonareva was often able to force the pace from the back of the court, rifling flat and brilliantly accurate groundstrokes into tight corners and sharp angles and also doing well when she followed up at the net.

Zvonareva required tough mental qualities too, for she was 1-4 down in the first set against the hard-hitting Dementieva and had to save a set point at 6/7 in the tie-break.

Before the sixth game Zvonareva hit herself dramatically on the head as though to knock sense into herself and, coincidence or not, her recovery began at that stage.

She managed her first hold of serve for 2-4, and at 3-5 crucially managed to hold again in a first set which had eight breaks of serve in 12 games.

In the tie-breaker Dementieva three times tried to shorten the rallies, with negative results, which helped Zvonareva to an important 5-1 lead. But in the second set she immediately began playing better.

That was largely because she served better, holding her delivery all through and needing to break Zvonareva just once to get a stranglehold on the set.

But curiously, the psychology of the match altered again in the final set, with Zvonareva often out-playing Dementieva from her opponent's area of greatest strength, the baseline, and racing to a 3-0 lead.

Dementieva almost got it back, reaching 3-4 and 30-15 on her own serve, before two crucially over-hit follow-ups after her serves cost her the eighth game.

Zvonareva closed out the match on her serve without fuss.



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