Dementieva Upsets Serena in Moscow

Elena Dementieva defeated Serena Williams for the first time in 4 career meetings by coming back to win 5-7, 6-1, 6-1 and claim her first Moscow Kremlin Cup title before her hometown crowd despite losing in the final two times before. Dementieva, who turns 26 years old on Monday, won her eighth career title and returned to the World Top 10 after an absence of over 6 months.

It was a disappointing loss for Serena who in the semifinal round had obtained revenge for last week's loss in Stuttgart against World #2 Svetlana Kuznetsova by defeating the Russian 7-6(2), 6-1. Dementieva, who has long struggled with her serve but throughout her career has possessed some of the most muscular strokes on both wings, simply played better than the 8-time Grand Slam champion who gave her opponent (some) credit for the win:

"She just played really unbelievable, she should play like that more often.

"I'm not going to make excuses for myself. I played terrible. I had a
feeling that almost every shot I hit, it was out."

Dementieva, on the other hand, said:

"It was very special playing in front of this crowd.

"They were behind me the whole week and especially today in the final.
Serena is such a great champion and I felt like this was really my chance to
play well against her, in front of my home crowd, too. It was very, very
important for me to do that today."

Serena, girl, are those comments really necessary? I mean, I know for all intents and purposes you had just gotten bageled (She broke Dementieva in the first game of the third set and then lost 6 consecutive games to lose the match) but, really "She should [try to] play like that more often"? That's just plain rude.