A week of exciting tennis has drawn to a close at Seoul Olympic Park Tennis Center. Maria Kirilenko is the 2008 Hansol Korea Open singles champion, and Chuang Chia-Jung and Hsieh Su-Wei are the doubles champions.

Kirilenko lost an exciting three-set final last year to Venus Williams. This year the Russian, as the top seed this time around, she came out on the winning end of another three-setter against Samantha Stosur, 2-6, 6-1, 6-4. She later came out again on Center Court for the doubles final with partner Vera Dushevina, but lost that one to the defending champions from Chinese Taipei.

It is Kirilenko’s third title of the year and fifth overall. She also recorded wins on clay earlier this year in Estoril and Barcelona. Samantha Stosur is still looking for a first singles title (although she has 22 doubles titles to her name). It was the first singles final for the unseeded Australian since she was sidelined for nearly a year beginning late last year through illness (later diagnosed as lyme disease) and injuries. She also reached the Gold Coast and Sydney finals in 2005 and the Prague final in 2006, but finished runner up in all three occasions.

Stosur started brightly, as Kirilenko seemed to be showing the effects of yesterday’s long singles match against Kaia Kanepi not to mention her doubles match. Stosur seemed to have picked up right where she left off strolling past Jill Craybas 6-0, 6-1 in the semifinal. She recorded a 197 km/h serve in her first service game, which she later said is the fastest serve she has recorded as far as she could remember. Kirilenko on the other hand kept putting her sliced backhand into the net, and Stosur kept attacking her second serves with good results. Kirilenko was broken twice and went down 5-2, at which point she received attention from the trainer. She later revealed that she had hit her knee with her racquet during a point. "Maybe it was good, you know, to wake me up," she quipped.

Kirilenko lost the first set 6-2 on yet another backhand error wide, but early on in the second set, there was a shift of momentum. Up 2-1 after the first three games had gone to serve, Kirilenko broke Stosur for the first time. The Australian made a couple of unforced errors on her forehand to go down two break points. She save one with an ace. On the next, however, the ball came off the frame of her racquet after Kirilenko did well to put Stosur’s forehand drive back into play.

That was the second in what became a nine-game run by Kirilenko as the top seed took the second set 6-1 and went up 4-0 in the third. Kirilenko seemed to have found her range on her forehand,  "I think I got a little bit passive with the way I was playing," recalled Stosur after the match, "and she stepped it up a little bit and became more aggressive, and kind of just continued, through to the, you know, 4-0 in the third.

"And it got to the point where I felt you know, you’ve got to stop this and change it, and then I started going for it more and trying to step up into the court, and be more aggressive and take some time away from her."

Stosur put down three unreturnable serves including an ace to snap the nine-game streak with a love game and get back to 4-1. In the next game, she broke Kirilenko to again to love to make it 4-2. Another solid service game made it 4-3, and the crowd sensed that perhaps the match was headed for a thrilling finish.

That was the extent of Stosur’s comeback, however, as Kirilenko took a close service game to move within one game of the championship. After Stosur also held, Kirilenko won her service game to love. As Stosur’s backhand sailed long on the final point, Kirilenko’s racquet flew into the air and the Russian let out a cry of celebration.

Kirilenko was happy she turned the match around after what she considered a sub-par effort from her in the first set. "I decided to play every ball no matter what happened," she said. "I just started to fight. It worked, and I’m very happy."

In the doubles final, Chuang Chia-Jung and Hsieh Su-Wei defended their title with a 6-3, 6-0 win over Vera Dushevina and Maria Kirilenko.

The singles and doubles champions and runners up received valuable Korean celadon porcelain as trophies.