{"id":2752,"date":"2014-06-16T17:12:10","date_gmt":"2014-06-16T10:12:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/?p=2752"},"modified":"2014-06-16T17:12:10","modified_gmt":"2014-06-16T10:12:10","slug":"ivanovic-beat-zahlavova-strycova-for-first-grass-court-title-in-birmingham","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/tennis\/ivanovic-beat-zahlavova-strycova-for-first-grass-court-title-in-birmingham\/","title":{"rendered":"Ivanovic beat Zahlavova-Strycova for first grass court title in Birmingham"},"content":{"rendered":"

BIRMINGHAM, England (AP) — Ana Ivanovic captured her first grass court title after almost a decade of trying on Sunday after a straight sets win over Barbora Zahlavova-Strycova at the Aegon Classic.<\/p>\n

The former world number beat Zahlavova-Strycova, 6-3, 6-2, with her opponent also playing in her first major tournament final.<\/p>\n

Although Ivanovic started shakily for the second day in succession, and dropped serve immediately, she recovered quickly, her heavy ground strokes and willingness to attack soon dominating her unseeded opponent.<\/p>\n

It suggested that, at 26, not only can she adapt to a variable surface, but underlined this as her best year so far since 2008.<\/p>\n

It was Ivanovic’s 37th win and her third title of the year, putting her level with Serena Williams’ and Maria Sharapova’s three.<\/p>\n

The Serb couldn’t contain her happiness at conquering her doubts about playing on grass. ”On grass you really don’t have time to hesitate,” she said…<\/p>\n

Read More<\/a><\/p>\n

South Africa Today Sport – Sport News Tennis<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BIRMINGHAM, England (AP) — Ana Ivanovic captured her first grass court title after almost a decade of trying on Sunday after a straight sets win over Barbora Zahlavova-Strycova at the Aegon Classic. The former world number beat Zahlavova-Strycova, 6-3, 6-2, with her opponent also playing in her first major tournament final. Although Ivanovic started shakily […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":58746,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[248],"tags":[1134,569,30,114,120,80,188,1272,337,1135],"class_list":["post-2752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-ana-ivanovic","tag-birmingham","tag-news","tag-south-africa-today","tag-south-africa-today-sport","tag-sport","tag-sport-news","tag-tennis","tag-tennis-news","tag-zahlavova-strycova"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2752","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2752"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2752\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}