WTA Carlsbad final - Marion Bartoli vs. Dominika Cibulkova (19:00 BST)

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by Crunch Sports Staff

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Dominika Cibulkova (credit: Stephen Dunn/Getty Images)

Top seed Marion Bartoli takes on Dominika Cibulkova later today in the final of the Mercury Insurance Open (19:00 BST start).

Despite being top seed, Bartoli is actually the underdog with bookmakers to win today's WTA Carlsbad final. She has had by far the easier draw of these two players throughout the week, but made heavy work of getting past qualifier Yung-Jan Chan in the semi-finals, hitting 14 double faults before coming through 1-6 6-3 6-3.

A similar case of service yips today will be soundly punished by the Slovak.

Cibulkova may be one of the shortest players on the tour, but she makes up for that with her feisty attitude and she dug deep to see off the big serving Nadia Petrova 7-6 6-1 on Saturday.

Petrova has struck 182 aces on the tour this year and she threatened to overwhelm Cibulkova at times, but after the Slovak saved set points to win a marathon first set tie-break, there was only going to be one winner.

Bartoli and Cibulkova are best friends and practise with each other regularly, so there will be few secrets when these two take to the court. The head-to-head between the two stands at 2-2, but given how poorly Bartoli served against Chan, we wouldn't be surprised to see Cibulkova win this, and a straight set victory shouldn't be ruled out either.

Prediction: Cibulkova in three.

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