Stanford: Marion Barts

In what I officially dub “a turn up for the books”, Marion Bartoli beat Venus Williams 62 57 64 for the Stanford title last night.

It’s a huge victory for Marion, her first WTA Premier title. Well-deserved, too. She said after the match that she feels her mental strength is her greatest asset and that very much came across. It was a sub-par performance from Venus, true, but I think that had a lot to do with Bartoli and the all-out aggression she brought in the first set. She rocked Venus back on her heels and kept up the pressure enough in the second to be serving for the match at 5-4. OK, she couldn’t get it done then and ended up double-faulting the set away, but she came back just as strongly in the third set – despite having played two matches in the quarters and semis that were over two hours long – and took advantage of an inconsistent Venus for the victory, even coming back from 0-30 to successfully serve out the match. Well done indeed.

It is worth noting, however, that Venus was more all over the place than I’ve seen her in a long time. Nothing was really working for her except her backhand, and her serve was spectacularly on the wonk. She was also much more demonstrative than I’ve ever seen her, betraying a lot of negative emotion.

She cheered up later though when she and Serena won the doubles 64 61 over Chan and Niculescu.