Justine-credible http://0rz.tw/7024k Justine Henin-Hardenne produced an incredible performance to defeat Maria Sharapova 6-2 7-6 in the semi-finals of the WTA Tour Championship in Madrid on Saturday. The win cracked Sharapova's 19-game unbeaten run and also ensured that Henin-Hardenne would finish the season as world number one. The Belgian's game-plan of implementing a serve and volley tactic at every possible opportunity seemed to confuse her Russian opponent who never really settled into things after making a slow start. Henin-Hardenne played near perfect tennis throughout, always putting Sharapova under pressure on the Russian's serve, while often breezing through most her own service games with apparent ease. Such astounding play as well as some sloppy double faults and long forehands from Sharapova helped the Belgian to race out to an early 5-1 lead in the first set. Then when serving for the set, Henin-Hardenne had her first sloppy game of the match and Sharapova broke, but in the very next game the Belgian was back on song as she clinched the set against the serve with a game to 15. One amazing reaching forehand winner in that game summed up how well Henin-Hardenne was playing. Keeping the ball in play was impressive enough but the way she managed to pass it beyond Sharapova who had moved up to the net was simply spectacular. The first eight games of the second set then went to serve, but then Henin-Hardenne broke to make it 5-4 in an epic game where she needed five break points. She couldn't close the game out though in the next game, as again the nerves took hold when the finishing line was in sight, as Sharapova dominated the game to break back. The two players then recovered with comfortable service games which ensured a tie-break, but despite coming back from 4-1 down to 4-4 in that tie-break, Sharapova was eventually just overwhelmed by Henin-Hardenne's quality, as the pint sized Belgian took the match 7-5 in the tie-break. It was a sweet victory for Henin-Hardenne who lost to Sharapova in the US Open final two months ago, but while she was happy to clinch her end-of-year number one ranking, she was still keen to stress after the match that the job had not been finished. "I'm very happy with the way I played and handled the pressure," she said. "I was very aggressive, I went to the net a lot, but the tournament is not over. I don't want to walk away and just feel happy that I finished the season world number one." -- 這個標題真有創意 他今天的表現的確是 Just incredible 很久沒看到他發球這麼猛了 比莎娃還猛 7個ace和許多直接得分 希望明天能有一樣的表現 btw Justine的名字還真好用 長可以拿來放標題作文章～ --

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