Clijsters gains revenge

Davenport won her fourth career title

Kim Clijsters defeated Lindsay Davenport in the Bank of West Classic on Stanford to claim her first title of the year.

The Belgian youngster avenged her quarter-final defeat to the American at Wimbledon with a composed 6-4 6-7 6-1 victory.

It was Clijsters first win over Davenport in five attempts as she carefully exploited the second seed's lack of match practice.

Davenport, playing in her fourth straight final in the event, rallied to win the second set on a tie-break but that effort left her enervated and Clijsters dominated the final set.

Some atypically poor serving from Davenport helped Clijsters to a 4-1 lead in the first set and she held on to take the set.

Davenport looked sluggish against Clijsters

But serve dominated in the second set and Davenport produced some trademark power play to take the tie break 7-5.

But that effort seemed to sap her energy and Clijsters broke three times at the start of the decisive set to move 4-1 ahead.

Playing confidently, she broke once more to wrap up the victory in one hour and 50 minutes.

Clijsters now moves up to career-high fifth in the world.

Davenport was left to reflect on her own poor performance.

She said: "I just felt like I wasn't 100% there. I felt like my return was pretty awful through the whole match and I really couldn't get anything going. "