Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova won her biggest title to date after winning the Premier-level Open GDF SUEZ title on Sunday in Paris. The young Russian defeated Sara Errani in a three-set tussle 36 62 63. Errani was also reached the final in this event a year ago (lost to Mona Barthel).
“When I lost seven games in a row I don’t really know what happened – maybe I was a little stressed because I was missing some shots and she was so solid,” Pavlyuchenkova said. “Also, I was serving so well throughout the tournament and there were times today where I was struggling on serve.
“But I knew it was from my side, so if I just focused and kept fighting I could get it back.”
Pavlyuchenkova overcame tough competition this week, having had to defeat four seeded players on the way to the title – 7th seed Carla Suarez Navarro of Spain, fourth-seed Angelique Kerber of Germany, top-seed Mari Sharapova and third-seed Sara Errani.
This is the young Russian’s sixth career title and the biggest to date, having won the first five International-level events.
Pavlyuchenkova later stated that she’s been focusing more on improving her game.
“I don’t like to look too far ahead or at rankings in general. I just want to keep working hard and improving my game, and if I keep doing those things it will show in rankings and results.”
As for Errani, she said that she’s still contented with how she fared in the tournament.
“I’m still very happy I could make the final,” she said said. “I had very good matches from the first round, from Knapp to Svitolina to Cornet, but I was a little bit more tired than normal in the match today because of yesterday. It was very tough to recover. But it was still a very good week for me.”
