23 Nov 2003 - Olympic Stadium, Moscow, RUS - Chris Bowers
USA v FRA
Star of the Week Mauresmo Sees French to Second Title
It was fitting that the best player of the week – perhaps the star of
the week – should steer the winners to their title. Amelie Mauresmo,
who has run into her best form over the past few weeks, has beaten Meghann
Shaughnessy 62 61 to give France an unbeatable 3-0 lead in only their
second Fed Cup final in the 40-year history of the competition.
“I feel such pride, and joy for the whole team,” said the Frenchwoman,
who sank to her knees with emotion when one of countless Shaughnessy
forehands went into the net on the second match point. She jumped into
the arms of captain Guy Forget, and shed tears of joy at the courtside,
before joining her team-mates and support staff in an on-court celebratory
can-can.
With France going into the final day 2-0 up, Mauresmo was an overwhelming
favourite to seal the victory in the first of the reverse singles, but in
the first three games Shaughnessy had a chance. “My game plan was to go
for her forehand because that’s certainly her weaker side,” said the
American, and the strategy was bringing in a number of easy points.
The problem was that Shaughnessy was making too many errors of her own
to make the most of Mauresmo’s inconsistency. She had three points to
hold serve in the third game, but made errors on all of them, and when
Mauresmo converted her second break point, the floodgates opened. “It
was probably the key moment, the third game,” said Mauresmo. “It was
a long game, and when I broke her I was really dominating the game and
dominating her, and I could feel she had no solution to beat me, which
gave me a lot of confidence.”
Mauresmo dropped just two points in her four service games in the first
set, and while she was challenged a little more in the second, she never
faced a break point. As Shaughnessy tried to apply more pressure, her own
forehand broke down, and it was a forehand into the net on match point
that ended the contest in Mauresmo’s favour after 61 minutes.
“I really wanted to win the Fed Cup,” said Mauresmo, who puts this
alongside her 10 WTA Tour titles and run to the final of the 1999
Australian Open. “It’s right up there, it’s one of the biggest
moments, maybe the biggest one, and sharing this with a team makes
it also very special.”
Shaughnessy said: “I couldn’t bring as much intensity to the match
as I did yesterday, and that’s something I’m going to have to work
on. But there have been a ton of positives from this week, I wouldn’t
swap playing Fed Cup for anything.”
In the two dead rubbers, Emilie Loit defeated Alexandra Stevenson 64 62
and Martina Navratilova paired with Lisa Raymond to defeat Stephanie
Cohen-Aloro and Loit 64 60, thus securing an eventual 4-1 victory for
the French.
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