{"id":3658,"date":"2012-01-08T08:23:52","date_gmt":"2012-01-08T00:23:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/?p=3658"},"modified":"2012-01-08T08:23:52","modified_gmt":"2012-01-08T00:23:52","slug":"czech-mate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/news\/2012\/01\/08\/czech-mate","title":{"rendered":"Czech Mate!"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Czech Republic lived up to their Hopman Cup top seeding, powering to their second title with a 2-0 victory over Spain in Perth on Saturday night.<\/div>\n

World No.2 Petra Kvitova defeated France’s Marion Bartoli 7-5 6-1 before Tomas Berdych wrapped up the tie with a 7-6 (7-0) 6-4 triumph over good friend Richard Gasquet.<\/p>\n

France, in their 18th Hopman Cup appearance, are yet to win the mixed-teams event, while the Czech Republic now have two titles to their name after Jana Novotna and Petr Korda won it in 1994.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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Czechoslovakia also won it in 1989.<\/p>\n

In a high-class men’s clash, world No.19 Gasquet saved two set points in the opening set but was blown away in the tiebreak as world No.7 Berdych unleashed some blistering ground strokes.<\/p>\n

The pair practised together before the tournament began, but Gasquet struggled to find answers to Berdych’s power game and the contest looked over when Berdych served for the match at 5-2 up.<\/p>\n

But Gasquet put up one last fight, breaking back before saving three match points on his own serve with a backhand winner, a forehand winner and an ace.<\/p>\n

At 5-4 the contest was back in the balance, but Berdych still held one break of serve and finished the contest with an ace.<\/p>\n

Kvitova, who entered her match full of confidence following her three-set win over world No.1 Caroline Wozniacki the day before, had to dig deep in the first set against Bartoli before securing the win in 89 minutes.<\/p>\n

Bartoli looked good early, and had the chance to serve out the first set after snaring the crucial break in the seventh game.<\/p>\n

But Kvitova, employing a beautiful mix of powerful ground strokes and deft drop shots, broke Bartoli twice in quick succession to take out the first set in 59 minutes.<\/p>\n

From there it was all one way traffic, with even the tennis gods shining favourably on Kvitova.<\/p>\n

With Bartoli down break point in the opening game of the second set, Kvitova sent a powerful forehand into the top of the net, with the ball dribbling over for a winner.<\/p>\n

“I’m happy that I won,” Kvitova said.<\/p>\n

“She’s improved a lot in the off season.<\/p>\n

“I was more aggressive on the return and my serve was tougher.”<\/p>\n

“It was a really good match (when I beat Wozniacki) but today I played much better against Marion,” Kvitova added.<\/p>\n

“It’s really good to win at the beginning of the season.”<\/p>\n

Despite France’s loss, Bartoli described the tournament as perfect preparation for the Australian Open.<\/p>\n

Berdych, who won all four of his singles matches, felt he was in good shape heading into the year’s first grand slam.<\/p>\n

“It couldn’t be better. It was a great week,” Berdych said.<\/p>\n

“I think that was the best final that could come up.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Czech Republic lived up to their Hopman Cup top seeding, powering to their second title with a 2-0 victory over Spain in Perth on Saturday night. World No.2 Petra Kvitova defeated France’s Marion Bartoli 7-5 6-1 before Tomas Berdych wrapped up the tie with a 7-6 (7-0) 6-4 triumph over good friend Richard Gasquet. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5894,"featured_media":3659,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5894"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3658"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3658\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}