BEIJING, Sept 29: Andy Roddick held off a fierce challenge from Israeli underdog Dudi Sela to win the China Open final on Sunday as top seed Jelena Jankovic sealed the women’s title with a thumping win.

Big-serving Roddick, the second seed in the Beijing tournament, overcame 92-ranked Sela 6-4, 6-7 (6-8), 6-3 while Jankovic defeated Svetlana Kuznetsova in straight sets.

Pushed throughout by his unfancied opponent, Roddick failed to take two match points in the second set tie-break as Sela recovered to level the match.

In the third and deciding set, Sela, who showed a willingness to come into the net throughout, continued to impress with the range of his shot-making, but could not force the break from Roddick.

Instead it was the world number eight who made the crucial breakthrough in the sixth game and despite further scares, he took the set 6-3 in a match lasting just over two hours.

“I think he was definitely playing well this week and I thought he played well today also,” Roddick said of Sela, who earlier in the tournament put out top seed David Ferrer and Tommy Robredo.

“At the back of my mind (I knew) I’d played in 38-40 finals and I knew this was his first one so I knew that had to count for something. So I wanted at least to stay in there and compete even though he was the hot player for the majority of the day,” he added.

In the women’s final, top seed and 2007 runner-up Jankovic beat Russia’s Kuznetsova, the 2006 winner, 6-3, 6-2 in one hour, 14 minutes.

From 3-2 down in the first set, Jankovic won nine of the next ten games to establish an iron grip on the match and fourth seed Kuznetsova could not match the intensity of the Serbian’s play.

Although Jankovic faltered when serving for the match, a succession of errors from the Kuznetsova racket in the following game gave her another chance and she took the second set 6-2.

Jankovic said she was motivated to beat Kuznetsova after losing to her at this month’s Pan Pacific Open in Tokyo.

She rejected the Russian’s assessment that her own error-strewn game had meant she had not had to play her best to win.

“I did what I needed to do to win the match. My level of tennis was enough to win. If she was not in the top of her game I could not really do anything but I think I played good tactically,” Jankovic stated.“I really was forcing some of the shots and didn’t really allow her to play her game.”

Earlier, a disappointed Kuznetsova, who has lost all five finals she has played this year, said: “She was stable like she always does but I could not even let her show a good game because I was doing all the mistakes.”

Jankovic’s victory in the 600,000-dollar women’s tournament takes her to within a handful of points of world number one Serena Williams.

Meanwhile in the men’s doubles final, Australia’s Stephen Huss and Britain’s Ross Hutchins beat Australian Ashley Fisher and Bobby Reynolds, from the US, 7-5, 6-4.

And in the women’s doubles final, the Spanish-Danish team of Anabel Medina Garrigues and Caroline Wozniacki beat Chinese pair Han Xinyun and Xu Yi-Fan 6-1, 6-3.

TSONGA SHOCKS DJOKOVIC