Hurricane Sabine Hits Dallas

At the same time as Irene hit the American East Coast, another hurricane took over the peaceful, climate friendly inaugural Dallas WTA stop. Sabine Lisicki caught fire after reuniting with her beloved grass courts. A title in Birmingham, a semifinal at Wimbledon and a steady run on the North American hardcourts and the German became one of the hottest player of the moment. Nevertheless, it wasn't until she reached Dallas, that the Sabine hurricane recorded its highest magnitude.

She was quick off the blocks, easily dismissing Indian Sania Mirza in the first round, 6-3,6-0. From there onwards, it was an easy ride for Lisicki, who managed to lose only 13 games on her way to her third career title. Relying on a power serve, tenacious footwork and heavy groundstrokes, the German was far too good for a rather open draw. When faced with her a challenge, all her opponents fell like flies. No one stood a chance to the German bulldozer, Sabine making light work in all of her matches. En route to the final, she destroyed Italian Alberta Brianti, Ukrainean Kateryna Bondarenko and Romanian Irina Begu. If some were expecting a tighter affair in the final against a recently rejuvenated Aravane Rezai, Lisicki proved them wrong. From two all in the first set, she went on to capture ten of the next eleven games and with them, the trophy.

With the prospect of bumping into unseeded Venus Williams in the second round, Sabine requires all the confidence in the world to ensure a long journey at this year's Flushing Meadows. Independent of the result of her US campaign, her comeback is more than spectacular. For a player who has seen her road to fame cut short by a horrible ankle injury, she has done wonders in making it back to the top.  It took her a while, but judging by her recent display, she doesn't look to have any plans of stopping here.

To add to the celebration, she was just announced the winner of the Xperia Hot Shots competition, surpassing fellow young stars Sorana Cirstea, Alize Cornet, Heather Watson, Dominika Cibulkova and Bethanie Mattek-Sands. After the thousands of fans voted for her, Sabine took home the coveted prize of 100k EUR courtesy of Sony Ericsson, the official WTA tour sponsor. Check out her Xperia Hot Shots profile video below:

photos (top-down / left-right): GETTY IMAGES, AP (x2)