Anna Chakvetadze Starts Comeback With Title in Portoroz, Slovenia

Russian Anna Chakvetadze has won her first title in over two years, stomping Sweden's Johanna Larsson 6-1, 6-2.

Chakvetadze's career has been in a slow but steady downward spiral since December 2007, when a brutal invasion by six men into her Moscow home seemingly left her understandably rattled and distracted.

Even though she lost in the second round of the tournament, Chakvetadze had a pretty impressive showing at Wimbledon this year, which seemed to have turned her around.  She surprised Andrea Petkovic (who was coming off a run to the final of 's-Hertogenbosch) in the first round, then hung tough against eventual champion Serena Williams in a 6-0, 6-1 match that was nowhere near as lopsided as the score would indicated.

Ranked in the top five back in 2007, Chakvetadze had fallen out of the top 100 after Wimbledon this year, and entered Portoroz ranked #103.  The title boosts her ranking 29 places, up to #74.

The win in Sunday's final improves Chakvetadze's record in WTA singles finals to an extremely impressive 8-1.

It's not a big tournament (it's so small I mocked then-#1 Dinara Safina for entering it last year), but hopefully it still represents a step in the right direction for Chakvetadze.  This sort of scheduling for a struggling player like herself is smart, and is exactly the sort of thing a struggling player like Ana Ivanovic should be doing as well, instead of only entering Premier events that she will undoubtedly crash out of in the first round.

Despite the optimism this should inspire among Chakvetadze fans, winning Portoroz is not a historically great career move, historically.  The five previous champions, Klara Koukalova (2005), Tamira Paszek (2006), Tatiana Golovin (2007), Sara Errani (2008), and Dinara Safina (2009), have combined for a total of zero WTA singles title since lifting the Portoroz hardware.  Those were some once pretty promising players, too.

Whatever the future brings, though, it's just good to see Anna smiling again for the first time in a long time.