Pacific Life Open Women's Final Preview

This post is cross-posted to Craig Hickman's Tennis Blog:

[2]S Kuznetsova (RUS) vs	[14]D Hantuchova (SVK)

And then there were two. As I predicted yesterday, the last three letters of the name of the 2007 Pacific Life Open women's champion will be the same as the last three letters of the 2006 Pacific Life Open women's champion: O-V-A. Last year it was Russian Maria Sharapova but she went out to fellow Russian Vera Zvonareva with a severe case of the service yips (25 double faults in two rounds of tennis!) which seem to be getting worse, not better. This year a new champion will be crowned, and it will be one of the two women pictured above in their official Sony Ericsson WTA Tour photos.

Svetlana Kuznetsova has already won a Grand Slam tournament and been to the final of another and holds 8 WTA Tour titles. After a severe let down in 2005 following her 2004 US Open win she spent 2006 steadying her game and rebuilding her ranking to its current lofty height of #4 in the World, a career best to date. Daniela Hantuchova has been ranked in the Top 5 in the world before, but has never been past the quarterfinals of a Grand Slam. She has won exactly one WTA Tour title before, but happily for her, it is the one that she is competing for tomorrow: the Pacific Life Open.

On paper one would have to give this to the Russian in an easy two sets but something tells me that Hantuchova will come out with an intense desire to win. When she is on, she can hit the ball as hard and paint the lines as any of the best ball strikers out there, ever. Hantuchova has much more to prove but I just don't believe that deep in the third set that her confidence will remain strong enough to take her past the woman Martina Navratilova called "the most talented of the Russians."

Mad Professah's pick: Kuznetsova (in 3 sets).