Paolini gains revenge on Kalinskaya by winning Dubai Tennis Championships title

The last time Jasmine Paolini faced Anna Kalinskaya, it started a run of three straight defeats. It was only last month, in the Australian Open fourth round, and was followed by successive first-round losses in Linz and Doha.

So, when she arrived in the UAE this week for the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships and was drawn against 11th seed Beatriz Haddad Maia, few would have expected Paolini to make much of an impact. However, six days later it was the Italian raising the famous coffee pot trophy aloft and celebrating the second, and undoubtedly the biggest, title of her career.

That she beat Kalinskaya 4-6, 7-5, 7-5 in Saturday's final, having stared squarely at defeat, was purely incidental.

Paolini, the third Italian woman to win a Masters 1000 title, will now enter the WTA's top 20 for the first time in her career, at a projected 14th, when the new rankings are released on Monday.

"Honestly, I don't know how I managed to win the match because she was playing too good at the beginning," Paolini, 28, said. "I tried to play more on the backhand, tried to push more, to also be more relaxed, to try to take the ball earlier because if not, she was moving me around so much. I was running a lot. But the key was to believe that even if I was down, I could turn the match [around]."

Indeed, it was an outcome that seemed unlikely midway through the match when Kalinskaya led by a set and 3-1 in the second. Yet, in a final packed with tension and drama, Paolini managed to hold her nerve slightly better than her opponent to ultimately emerge victorious.

The tension was evident from the outset as both players struggled to convince on serve. Kalinskaya took the initial advantage with an immediate break for 2-0, but Paolini was