By ,
Published January 08, 2015
Katowice, Poland (SportsNetwork.com) - Alize Cornet of France captured her fourth career WTA championship by beating Italian Camila Giorgi in Sunday's finale of the BNP Katowice Open.
The fourth-seeded Cornet earned a 7-6 (7-3), 5-7, 7-5 triumph to claim her first title of 2014. The 24-year-old knocked off Poland's Agnieszka Radwanska in the semifinals Saturday, but a day later nearly fell to the 69th-ranked player in the world in a match that took 3 hours, 11 minutes to complete.
The 22-year-old Giorgi, up 5-4 in the final set in her first WTA final, will rise to No. 53 when the new rankings are released Monday. Cornet was serving at match point, down 4-5 in the final set, but Giorgi missed a backhand return, which brought the game to deuce. After Cornet held serve, then broke and held at love to win the match.
Cornet had a breakthrough win earlier this year with a semifinal victory over Serena Williams in Dubai. She couldn't pull off that tournament's title, though, falling to Venus Williams in the final.
This was Cornet's eighth career final.
https://www.foxnews.com/sports/cornet-beats-giorgi-for-poland-title