Jelena Jankovic and Katarina Srebotnik have been crowned doubles champions of the 2013 Rogers Cup presented by National Bank in Toronto, as fans at Rexall Centre saw the pair defeat No. 3 seeds Anna-Lena Groenefeld and Kveta Peschke 5-7, 6-2, 10-6 in Sunday’s final.
The win gives Jankovic, a former world No. 1 in singles, her second career doubles title. For her partner, doubles veteran Srebotnik, Rogers Cup is her 34th WTA title and an improvement upon her runner-up position in Montreal last year alongside Nadia Petrova.
The Serbian-Slovenian team made it to the final after ousting Dominika Cibulkova and Su-Wei Hsieh in the first round, then upsetting the No. 6-seeded duo of Liezel Huber and Nuria Llagostera Vives.
In the quarter-finals, they defeated an even higher-ranked team – No. 4 Raquel Kops-Jones and Abigail Spears – before facing the all-Canadian duo of Sharon Fichman and Gabriela Dabrowski. Fichman and Dabrowski were coming off their big win over the No. 1-ranked Italian team of Sara Errani and Roberta Vinci, but Jankovic and Srebotnik were able to overcome their momentum to move into the final.
Rogers Cup presented by National Bank is the first title the team has won together. They will now travel to Cincinnati, where they will compete on separate teams. Srebotnik will play with Hao-Ching Chan of Chinese Taipei, and Jankovic will play with Mirjana Lucic-Baroni of Croatia.
