Agnieszka Radwanska won her first (!) title of the year, beating Venus Williams, 6-4 6-2 to win the Rogers Cup in Montreal.  I really didn’t expect Aga to win the title this week.  She hadn’t reached a final since Indian Wells and was very disappointing in Stanford last week, losing out in three sets to Varvara Lepchenko in Stanford.  However, everything changed in Canada with victories over Barbora Zahlavova Strycova, Sabine Lisicki, Victoria Azarenka, Ekaterina Makarova and Venus in the final.  It was a really solid week from Aga and she played such a smart match in the final.

This was a tremendous week from Venus Williams, but she just ran out of the steam in this final.  To be honest, I expected this performance to happen in the quarter-finals or the semi-finals.  I got carried away with her amazing week in my pre-match prediction.  Against Radwanska, smart, solid and with the ability to get EVERYTHING back, Venus was impatient and made some sloppy errors, which looked to be down to tiredness.  I’ve really developed a huge amount of respect for Venus this year for the way she always leaves everything out on the court.  Even in the final, she never stopped fighting and twice recovered deficits, coming back from 4-1 to 4-3 in the first set and then 2-0 to 2-2 in the second set.  If you’re feeling tired, Radwanska must be top of the list of players you would leasr want to play.

Venus is set to play Lucie Safarova in the first round of Cincy next week, but it would be a major surprise if she turns up.  I really hope she takes a week off.  Meanwhile, Radwanska shouldn’t have expended too much energy and has a reasonable draw to the quarter-finals.  Montreal was brilliant this week.  There were so many great matches, of which I still need to catch up on the highlights from.  I love tennis, but MY GOD, I wish it would slow down! Cincy starts tomorrow…