Game, set and thatch: Svetlana Kuznetsova cuts own…

Game, set and thatch: Svetlana Kuznetsova cuts own hair during WTA final

Russia’s Svetlana Kuznetsova said she did what she had to do to beat Agnieszka Radwańska in the WTA finals in Singapore: she gave herself a haircut.

Kuznetsova was trailing the defending champion 1-2 in the third set of the round robin opener on Monday when she requested a break and a pair of scissors. She then hacked off her ponytail about halfway down.

The unconventional tactic seemed to work, with Kuznetsova producing a stunning comeback from match point down to defeat Radwańska 7-5, 1-6, 7-5.

“Sometimes you gotta do it not by best hairdressers and not at [the] best time,” she wrote under a video on Instagram.

Questions over her haircut opened the post-match press conference, with Kuznetsova explaining that her plait had been bothering her by getting in her eyes.

“Every time I would hit a good shot, it would hit my eye every time and I had [to] struggle,” she said.

“I thought, ‘OK, what’s more important now, my hair, which I can let grow, or the match?’ I thought, ‘OK, I got to go for it right now’, and that’s it. I was not thinking too much, though.

“I was just trying to get the best of me ... I don’t even know how much I cut there.”

The Women’s Tennis Association shared a clip of the impromptu cut on Twitter, describing it as “something you don’t see every day”.

Kuznetsova had staved off exhaustion in the deciding set to emerge victorious over Radwańska, the world number three.

“At some point I was ready to just let it go and lie on the court and let them take me out of here but I decided to hang in there,” the two-time grand slam champion said.

She had only qualified for the elite eight-woman tournament when she won the Kremlin Cup in Moscow on Saturday, beating Australia’s Daria Gavrilova in straight sets.

Gavrilova was following Kuznetsova’s encounter with Radwańska with interest.

“Did Sveta just cut her own hair?” she tweeted with the tears of laughter emoji.