By Richard Pagliaro | Sunday, April 9, 2016
Dominika Cibulkova celebrated her father's birthday delivering a crushing 6-4, 6-0 conquest of Camila Giorgi in the Katowice final.
Photo credit: Radek Rogowski/Katowice Open
No quite does tennis celebrations like Dominika Cibulkova.
The 5'3" Slovak hits with the jolting pace of a woman 6'3", throws fist pumps with enough force to shatter windows, and punctuates winners roaring "Pome!" with the full-throated blare of an aspiring opera singer.
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It should come as no surprise that Cibulkova turned the Katowice Open final into a party palace for her biggest fan, her father Milan.
Cibulkova celebrated dad's birthday gift-wrapping a 6-4, 6-0 thrashing of Camila Giorgi to collect her fifth career title.
Clutching the glass title trophy in her hand, Cibulkova sent a birthday shout-out to her father who responded theatrically bowing down to his champion daughter.
"To drive three hours (from home to play) it was very nice, it almost feels like home," Cibulkova told the crowd. "Today was my father's birthday so I think this is the best cake. So happy birthday dad."
It is Cibulkova's first championship since she beat Christina McHale to win the 2014 Acapulco crown and her first win over Giorgi in three meetings.
The fired-up former Australian Open finalist came out blasting the ball with confidence. In early rallies, Cibulkova was always one step ahead as if she was operating from choreography she created while Giorgi was learning steps on the fly.
Crunching a backhand winner crosscourt that froze her opponent, Cibulkova broke to open. Slashing returns, Cibulkova broke again in the third game roaring out a 4-0 start.
Contesting her third straight Katowice final, Giorgi didn't gain much traction until fighting through a hold at 30 for 1-4.
When she's timing the ball effectively and driving off her front foot, Giorgi can stand and trade with many of the best power players in the sport. For a player who moves with the grace of a figure skater, Giorgi does not like to defend preferring instead to stand on the line and play grip and rip tennis regardless of the score.
Continuing to prowl the baseline, Giorgi began to hit with more accuracy and began a fight-back from 1-5 down.
Serving for the set, Cibulkova squandered set points, double faulted and ballooned a backhand donating a twitchy service game. Giorgi held at 30 for 4-5 and had a pair of break points to level
That's when Cibulkova dug in and made a stand—with a little help from the net. A backhand collided with the net and plopped over saving the first break point. Cibulkova staved off the second with a forehand winner, eventually holding to seal the set and spark a run of seven straight games.
Once she had the opening set, Cibulkova cranked up her drives with even more depth and angle breaking a disconsolate opponent to open the second set. Three times Giorgi has reached the Katowice final and come up short and she looked resigned to that familiar ending by the early stages of the second set.
Another flat Giorgi drive died into the middle of the net and Cibulkova celebrated with a rousing "pome!" breaking for the second time in a row. The sight of Cibulkova dancing to her right as Giorgi's toss went up spooked the Italian into scattering a double fault as Cibulkova broke for 5-0.
The Bratislava-born baseliner converted five of seven break-point chances powering through the final seven games to seal a 74-minute blow-out. Cibulkova, who will return to the Top 50 when the new WTA rankings are released tomorrow, will celebrate her 27th birthday on May 6th. She gave her father a birthday gift to remember today.