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Petra Kvitova thrashes Kristina Mladenovic to claim St Petersburg tennis title
Petra Kvitova brushed aside defending champion Kristina Mladenovic in straight sets to win the St Petersburg tennis title.
Petra Kvitova steamrolled Kristina Mladenovic in 65 minutes to become the first wildcard to lift the St Petersburg Ladies’ Trophy in a one-sided tennis final on Sunday.
In her debut appearance at the event, Kvitova has impressed throughout the week and quickly asserted her dominance over defending champion Mladenovic.
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The 21st title of her career came courtesy of a 6-1 6-2 victory, ending Mladenovic’s recent run of good form – the fourth seed having failed to win a singles match since July before arriving in Russia.
Mladenovic will be pleased to have ended that barren spell, but her performance in the final was below-par as Kvitova showed accuracy in her serve and great power from the baseline.
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Kvitova sprayed shots to all corners of the court as Mladenovic was regularly left watching and hoping the Czech’s radar was off.
It rarely was, though, and after half an hour Kvitova was ahead, reeling off five games in a row with a string of winners – the 27-year-old hitting 16 to Mladenovic’s two.
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The second set was almost a carbon copy as the Czech’s court management kept her in the ascendancy, applying pressure on Mladenovic to break twice more.
Mladenovic’s frustrations were added to by Kvitova’s serene service games, the last of which brought her second title since returning from a hand injury at last year’s French Open and maintained her streak of winning at least one tournament in every year since 2011.