Polish teenager Agnieszka Radwanska won the biggest prize of her career when she beat Russian Nadia Petrova in a close-fought final at the Eastbourne International tournament on Saturday.
The fourth-seeded Radwanska triumphed 6-4, 7-6, 6-4 in a final that stretched over two hours 37 minutes at the grasscourt Wimbledon warm-up event.
Petrova, seeded eighth, saved three match points to take the second set to a tiebreak which she won 13-11 after recovering from 4-1 down.
Both women took time out for medical treatment -- Radwanska for cramp and Petrova for a hip problem -- in the deciding set which went with serve until the ninth game.
Petrova, rattled by line rulings against her in the previous game, saved one break point but put a forehand long on the second to leave the 19-year-old Radwanska serving for the title and the first prize of $95,500.
Petrova, the world number 22, summoned her coach on court at the changeover, her fourth such consultation of the match.
A lucky net cord helped her to save another match point in the tenth game but she then put a backhand into the net to give Radwanska, a former Wimbledon and French Open junior champion, her first Tier II title on the WTA Tour.
Radwanska, ranked 14th and the first Polish woman in the world top 20, had a difficult tournament, playing twice in one day on Friday after her second-round match was unable to finish late on Thursday.
"I am exhausted after all these matches," she told a news conference. "The bad thing is that I am playing on Monday (at Wimbledon) so I won't have any time to rest."
Radwanska plays Czech Iveta Benesova in the first round at Wimbledon, where her younger sister Urszula, last year's Wimbledon junior champion, has been given a wild-card entry into the main draw.
The older Radwanska said her father Robert, who is also her coach, had found Saturday nerve-racking. "Sometimes he was too nervous to watch so he was in the players' lounge," she said with a laugh.
Petrova, who said she had strapped up her right knee as a precaution after suffering a ligament strain before the tournament, blamed herself for losing, saying: "I didn't stay as focused as I had to at the important moments."
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