Although this week has been reasonably quiet on the WTA Tour, there have been some notable milestones reached in the two events held in the past week. The old Diamond Games in Antwerp, Belgium (last held in 2009) were reinstated, and the final edition of the PTT Pattaya Open was held in the coast resort of Pattaya City, Thailand. The two tournaments have also ushered in the resurgence of former top-10 players such as Andrea Petkovic, Daniela Hantuchova, and Francesca Schiavone, with the former two winning events in Antwerp and Pattaya City, respectively. While neither tournament ran according to plan, both players were able to survive the early eliminations of the higher-ranked players in the early rounds.

The Diamond Games were reinstated this year after a six-year hiatus, replacing the former Paris Indoors event that was held at the same time in years prior. Early signs were not promising for the tournament, which lost its top two seeds (Eugenie Bouchard and Angelique Kerber) in their first matches. A possible reason for their early losses may have been the court surface, which favored their opponents more. The surface that they used this year at the Antwerp event was the cushioned Proflex surface, which creates a much higher bounce and vastly slower court speed than what most players expect from an indoor hard-court tournament, which is officially classified by the ITF as Medium-Slow. The result of this was that the players who made deep runs in this event were those who allow for much greater consistency in their games than aggressive ball-strikers. This was shown by the success of players such as Francesca Schiavone, Andrea Petkovic, and Carla Suarez Navarro, who all have had their greatest on-court successes on clay.

While Petkovic won the title when Suarez Navarro withdrew due to a neck injury, she had a number of extremely close and competitive matches in the earlier rounds of the tournament. One such match was her second-round encounter against the Belgian wildcard, Alison Van Uytvanck, when the German fended off eight match points in the second set to finally win the match 6-7(7) 7-6(5) 6-2. What ultimately allowed her to prevail in this match and the rest of the tournament was her level-headedness and mental strength in difficult moments, preventing her opponents in later rounds from being able to gain the upper hand in their matches. This was the case in her final match of the tournament against Barbora Zahlavova Strycova, where she won narrowly in straight sets, 7-6(2) 7-6(6). By virtue of winning the event this week, Petkovic also returns to the top 10 in this week’s rankings, after having fallen out of it in 2012 due to a series of back, ankle, and knee injuries.

The level of determination and grit showed by Petkovic in her title run this week was similar in style to Daniela Hantuchova in her defeat of Ajla Tomljanovic to claim her seventh career title. Similar to the event in Antwerp, the Pattaya Open lost all but one of its top eight seeds by the quarterfinal stage, with Monica Puig, the seventh-seeded Puerto Rican, being the only seed remaining. This left the draw wide open, and it was Hantuchova who eventually took this opportunity, but it was not without its difficulties. In her semifinal match against the No. 1 New Zealander, Marina Erakovic, Hantuchova had to fend off two match points in the second set, not unlike Petkovic.

The championship match was equally as hard, since Tomljanovic had only lost one set all week and looked as if she was to win her first WTA title, taking the first set 6-3. Hantuchova started the match off quite flat, and it was her younger opponent who took the initiative early by dictating rallies with her aggressive and piercing ball-striking, which put Hantuchova immediately on the defensive. The Slovakian remained undeterred, however, and began playing more consistently. This drew more errors from her younger opponent in the second and third sets. This, combined with her court craft, allowed Hantuchova to claim her third Pattaya City crown, winning the final 3-6 6-3 6-4.