Moscow: Second seed Victoria Azarenka beat Russian Maria Kirilenko 6-3, 6-4 in a see-saw Kremlin Cup final here yesterday to win her second title of the year.
Azarenka broke the sixth seed three times in the opening set. It was the first set conceded by Kirilenko all week, with the Muscovite dropping only nine games in her previous four matches here.
Kirilenko returned the favour by breaking the more powerful Belarussian twice at the start of the second to take a 4-0 lead, but the world No 10 battled back to reel off six straight games and add the crown to her US victory in Stanford.
Azarenka had already secured her place in the season-ending WTA championships in Doha which starts tomorrow.
Azarenka reached her first Kremlin Cup final with a 6-3, 6-3 win over Spain's Maria Jose Martinez Sanchez on Saturday while Kirilenko thrashed compatriot Vera Dushevina 6-1, 6-1 in the second semi-final.
Breaking serve
World No 10 Azarenka dominated eighth-seeded Martinez Sanchez from the baseline, breaking her serve in the fifth game to take the opening set and twice more in the second to seal a first victory over the Spaniard in three attempts.
"I had the right tactics against Sanchez," said Azarenka. "I didn't allow her to play aggressively, the way she likes, and also come to the net."
The annual ATP and WTA indoor tournament has been hit by withdrawals of high-profile players, especially among the women.
Home favourites Vera Zvonareva, Svetlana Kuznetsova and Maria Sharapova as well as Italy's 2009 champion Francesca Schiavone all pulled out in the run-up to the event.
In the men's draw fourth-seeded Cypriot Marcos Baghdatis had to work much harder than the women's finalists to reach his first Kremlin Cup showpiece on his Moscow debut.
Long-drawn fight
The world No 19, the highest seed left in the men's draw, battled for nearly 2-1/2 hours before beating unseeded Uzbek Denis Istomin 6-4, 6-7, 7-6.
"I fought hard to the very end. Fortunately I won. I'm happy and I'll try to play better tomorrow," said Baghdatis, who will face another unseeded opponent, Viktor Troicki, on Sunday.
The 43rd-ranked Serbian ended the giant-killing run of Uruguay's Pablo Cuevas by winning 6-3, 6-3.
Cuevas had eliminated top seed Nikolay Davydenko of Russia and fifth-seeded Czech Radek Stepanek in the two previous rounds of the competition, before finally running out of steam in the semi-finals.
