Agnieszka Radwanska has become the first non-Grand Slam champion to win the WTA Championships since Amelie Mauresmo in 2005 thanks to a 6-2 4-6 6-3 victory over Petra Kvitova in Singapore this afternoon.
The Pole went into the encounter with a 6-2 head-to-head deficit against her opponent from the Czech Republic, but she reduced the arrears in two hours and six minutes to lift the biggest title of her career to date.
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Radwanska took control of proceedings almost immediately when two-time Wimbledon winner Kvitova opened up with a double fault and then followed that up by sending a forehand wide. It allowed Radwanska to break and she repeated that trick in the fifth game to open up a 4-1 lead, which proved to be insurmountable for the world number four.
Just as she did in the first set, Radwanska then broke at the first time of asking in the second set and she looked to be heading for a routine victory when she carved out a 3-1 advantage.
However, 2011 champion Kvitova rallied thereafter to first make it 3-2 and then win the next eight points in succession courtesy of a string of winners to make the scoreline 4-3 in her favour.
Radwanska held to square things up, but Kvitova had now found some rhythm and she went on to force the contest into a decider, despite the fact that the 26-year-old on the other side of the net had not made one unforced error over the course of the whole set.
There were four evenly split breaks in the opening six games of the third set, but when Radwanska broke once again to go 4-3 in front, she then ended the sequence of breaks by holding, which left her one game away from victory.
Radwanska sealed it in the very next game when having brought up three championship points against the serve, she needed just one of them as Kvitova fired into the net.
Liam Apicella
