Vesnina and Federer won Indian Wells titles at the expense of talented compatriots, Kuznetsova and Wawrinka

Svetlana Kuznetsova had won the first set from Elena Vesnina, 8-6 in a tiebreaker, on a lucky net-cord winner. She had broken her demoralized opponent to start the second set, and was now up 3-1 and serving at 40-15. Kuznetsova had won 17 WTA singles titles during her 14-year career; Vesnina, a doubles specialist for most of hers, had won two. Everything seemed to point to a Kuznetsova win.

When she tossed the ball to serve at 40-15, though, something changed. Specifically, Kuznetsova’s grunt changed. Out of nowhere, it became deeper, more pronounced, more guttural. It sounded like the grunt of someone who was laboring mightily just to put the ball over the net, not cruising to an inevitable victory.
Despite being broken seven times on the day, Vesnina had no trouble holding onto her serve for a 6-7 (6), 7-5, 6-4 win in three hours and one minute. After 13 years on tour, she had earned by far the biggest win of her singles career. This popular and thoughtful 30-year-old, who is also the most talented player in virtually every doubles match she plays, was appropriately ecstatic.

“I was playing a bit more free when I was down in the score, and I think Svetlana got a little tight,” Vesnina said. “And I saw that.”



“What can I say?” Roger Federer told the crowd after his 6-4, 7-5 win over Stan Wawrinka in the men’s final. “This was a fairytale week again.”

Fairytales have happy endings, the way Federer’s week did, but they usually don’t make you shake your head and say “whoa” or “wow” or “d---” every three minutes or so.

In that sense, it was a throwback week for Federer, to those days a decade ago when he was a dominant No. 1, when hard-court Masters titles came by the fistful, and when he looked as if he were playing circles around his opponents. While Federer was fortunate to be given a quarterfinal walkover against Nick Kyrgios, who might have been his toughest opponent, he won this tournament without dropping a set, and at one point he held serve 42 straight times. He also showed that his wins over Wawrinka and Rafael Nadal at the Australian Open in January were no fluke. In fact, Federer seemed to have improved since we saw him in Melbourne. Instead of taking 10 sets to survive Stan and Rafa, he took just four.What I don’t want to do,” he said on Saturday, “is overplay and just get tired of traveling and tired of just playing tournaments.”

“I want to play, if people see me, that they see the real me and a guy who is excited that he’s there. So that’s a promise I made to myself that if I play tournaments that’s how my mindset has to be and will be.”