Anna No Match For Hingis
Anna Kournikova had a raucous home crowd supporting her and a familiar opponent across the net as she tried again to win her first WTA Tour title.
She didn't come close.
Top-ranked Martina Hingis beat Kournikova 6-3, 6-1 Sunday to win the Kremlin Cup in a lopsided match that made the 20-year-old Swiss the youngest tennis player to win $14 million in prize money.
In the men's final, Olympic champion Yevgeny Kafelnikov beat David Prinosil 6-2, 7-5 for his fourth straight Kremlin Cup crown and his first ATP Tour title of 2000.
Hingis now has eight titles this year and 34 for her career.
Kournikova, who will move back into the top 10 for the first time since April by virtue of reaching the championship match, is 0-for-4 in finals appearances.
"I'm glad I got to the finals and I am upset at losing the match," the Russian said. "I played well yesterday, but today Martina played better. I struggled until the last point."
She was cheered on by a sellout crowd of 16,300 inside Olympic Stadium.
After their match, Hingis and Kournikova went out to play the doubles final. They lost to U.S. Open champions Julie Halard-Decugis and Ai Sugiyama 4-6, 6-4, 7-6 (5).
In gaining her 70th singles match win of the year, Hingis reeled off five straight games to close out the first set in 26 minutes and move out to a 3-0 lead in the second.
After Kournikova took the fourth game of the second set, Hingis lost just one point the rest of the way.
The whole match took 46 minutes.
"I think in the beginning, it was a very even match," Hingis said. "But in the second set she started missing a little bit more. I knew I had to play very well against her today because she had nothing to lose and the crowd supported her."
Hingis, who earned $166,000 for the victory, lost only one set during her run through the tournament. She now owns a 9-1 career record against Kournikova.
Kafelnikov broke Prinosil's serve twice en route to winning the first set in 28 minutes.
"I didn't have the slightest doubt in my victory today," said Kafelnikov, a two-time Grand Slam tournament champion who will remain No. 5 in the ATP Champions Race.
Prinosil, an unseeded German who surprised U.S. Open champion Marat Safin in the semifinals here, had a chance to stay in the final when he was serving at 5-5 in the second set.
But he went down 15-40 in that 11th game and then double-faulted to essentially hand the game, set and match to Kafelnikov.
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