Last week Azerbaijan’s capital Baku played venue for a WTA tournament with more than 226 thousand dollars in prize money.
The surprise of this tournament was a 21-years-old player from Romania named Patricia Tig who made it to the finals before which she was ranking 154th in WTA standings. The performance, which was a first in her career, has been rewarded with the Athlete of the Week title, usually granted by our radio station to the athlete, who best represented Romania in the week that passed.
In the competition's preliminary stage, the Romanian outperformed Georgian player Oksana Kalashnikova. The first win was followed by a couple of main draw victories against Olga Ianciuk and Olga Savciuk of Ukraine. The Romanian outperformed Croatian Donna Vekic in quarters and eliminated the odds-on favourite, Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova of Russia in the semis. The Romanian didn't lose a set until the finals where she conceded defeat to Margarita Gasparian of Russia 6-3, 5-7, 6-0.
For having qualified for the finals in Baku, Patricia walked away with 21,400 dollars and 198 WTA points. She also climbed 39 positions in the WTA standings, currently ranking 115th.
Also worth noting is that had she won in Baku the Romanian would have become the worst rated player to win a WTA title this year. The performance however belongs to Brazilian Teliana Pereira, who won the tournament in Bogota when she was ranking 130th in WTA standings.
Patricia's first participation in the main draw of a major WTA tournament was in BRD Bucharest Open where she made it to the eighth finals. In Bucharest she joined Andreea Mitu for a finals double game they lost to Georgian-Dutch pair Kalashnikova-Schuurs.
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