Stosur looking for season-ending highlight

MOSCOW (AFP) –

Samantha Stosur returns a shot during a Pan Pacific Open match in Tokyo in September. The Australian will look to win her first title of 2012 in what seems certain to be her final tournament of the season at the Kremlin Cup.

Australia’s world number nine Samantha Stosur will look to win her first title of 2012 in what seems certain to be her final tournament of the season at the Kremlin Cup, which starts on Monday.

Stosur, who was US Open champion in 2011, had been desperate to sneak into the $4.9 million WTA Championships in Istanbul later this month, but just missed out on the elite top-eight line-up after losing early to Julia Goerges in Beijing.

That defeat allowed China’s Li Na to claim the final spot in the money-spinning Turkey tournament, leaving 28-year-old Stosur dependent on an injury withdrawal if she is to extend her season.

Stosur will be the top seed in Moscow, but 2012 has been a year of disappointments, with the tough Australian reaching just one final — in Doha in February, when she lost to world number one Victoria Azarenka.

Her ranking has slipped from four to nine and, tellingly, the last of her nine career titles came with her Grand Slam breakthrough triumph in New York over a year ago.

Her latest tournament saw her ousted in the Japan Open semi-finals on Saturday, when she was dumped out by Taiwan’s world number 134 Chang Kai-chen.

Alexandr Dolgopolov returns a shot during a Shanghai Masters match on October 11. The 23-year-old Dolgopolov has an opening-round bye at the Kremlin Cup, as does Italy’s Andreas Seppi and Serbia’s Viktor Troicki, the 2010 winner.

But Stosur refuses to be too downcast by her year, which has included first-round exits at the Australian Open and Olympics and a second-round loss at Wimbledon.

“Where I am at now, I know how I want to play, and it is a matter of executing it,” Stosur told Australian media.

“Sometimes players can get caught up in, ‘I didn’t get this ranking or that ranking, and I have to change it.’

“There are a couple of things I’m trying to do — a more aggressive second-serve return, improve my return, improve my serve, from the baseline do a few different things.”

It will be the first time in six years that Stosur has played in Moscow.

She enjoys an opening-round bye along with second-seeded Frenchwoman Marion Bartoli, third seed Caroline Wozniacki of Denmark, and Serbia’s Ana Ivanovic, who is seeded fourth.

Last year’s champion, Dominika Cibulkova of Slovakia, is seeded fifth and will start her title defence against local favourite Ekaterina Makarova.

The Kremlin Cup also features a men’s tournament, where Alexandr Dolgopolov of Ukraine, the world number 20, takes top seeding.

The 23-year-old Dolgopolov has an opening-round bye, as does Italy’s Andreas Seppi, Serbia’s Viktor Troicki, the 2010 winner, and Thomaz Bellucci of Brazil, who are seeded second, third, and fourth respectively.

In 1990, the Kremlin Cup, which was staged as an ATP tournament only at that time, became the country’s first professional international tennis competition.

Russians have dominated the event, winning 14 of the 21 titles, with Yevgeny Kafelnikov claiming a record five consecutive titles between 1997 and 2001.

Last year, Janko Tipsarevic defeated Troicki in the first-ever all-Serbian final on the ATP World Tour.