PARIS (AP)—Thinner, mentally tougher and No. 1 in the rankings, Dinara Safina feels ready to win her first Grand Slam title.The top-seeded Safina is half of the third all-Russian major championship match. She needs to beat Svetlana Kuznetsova in Saturday’s French Open final to claim one of the four biggest titles in tennis.Safina took over as the top-ranked player in April, and she has reached the final in the four tournaments she has played, all on clay. In her 21 matches since then, she has lost only once—to Kuznetsova.Her inner toughness came through in the quarterfinals at Roland Garros. After dominating four straight opponents—losing only five games in the first four rounds—Safina lost the first set to Victoria Azarenka 6-1. But in the semifinals, she was back to her dominating self after a slight blip at the start, beating Dominika Cibulkova 6-3, 6-3.
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