PARIS, France - Amélie Mauresmo capped a glorious return to the winner's circle against one of the hottest players on the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour on Sunday, taking out Elena Dementieva in a three set thriller in front of her French home crowd in Paris for the prestigious Open GDF SUEZ title.

For Mauresmo, the Open GDF SUEZ marked somewhat of a career renaissance. After finishing seven of eight years between 1999 and 2006 ranked inside the world's Top 10 - including spending 39 non-consecutive weeks at No.1, five in 2004 and 34 more in 2006 - she was thrown off by injury in 2007, resulting in her ending 2007 at No.18 and 2008 at No.24. At 29 years of age, the questions about whether she was considering retirement were unrelenting, but she still believed she could be a world-beater again, and she kept working hard.

Mauresmo showed flashes of the brilliance that took her to two Grand Slams - the Australian Open and Wimbledon in 2006 - in her first event of 2009 at Brisbane, beating Ana Ivanovic en route to a semifinal finish. But on home turf this past week the No.8-seeded Frenchwoman was in full bloom, storming through her first three matches, including a 62 60 rout of No.4 seed Agnieszka Radwanska in the quarterfinals, then ousting No.2 seed Jelena Jankovic in the semifinals, 62 06 61.

Dementieva was a different kind of opponent, however. Seeded No.3, she had won 19 of her first 20 matches of the year coming in, and having received a semifinal walkover from an injured top-seeded Serena Williams, she was sure to be fresh. She had also won her last two meetings with Mauresmo in straight sets, including a 64 60 drubbing at an indoor event in Luxembourg a few months ago.

Coming through in an extremely tight first set may have made the difference at the Stade Pierre de Coubertin, as Mauresmo - whose biggest struggles over the last two years had come in those critical moments - dispatched longtime rival Dementieva in three sets, 76(7) 26 64, for her 25th career singles title on the Tour, and first since Antwerp, Belgium almost exactly two years ago. The crafty Frenchwoman rallied from 5-3 down in the first set, saving a set point down 6-5 in the tie-break; in the third set she seemingly lost momentum as she allowed Dementieva to close from 1-5 to 4-5, but served it out at love anyway.

"I'm just happy it finally showed after a couple of years of struggling," Mauresmo said. "During the last few months in practice I could see there were some great moments, but it was only showing in matches now and then. I didn't know when my consistency at this level was going to happen again, or if it would.

"When you look at the field and all the great players that were here in Paris, I'm very happy and very proud about this week."

Dementieva falls to 19-2 on the year, having won back-to-back titles at Auckland and Sydney before reaching the semifinals of the Australian Open (falling to Serena Williams) and the final of Paris. The Russian was also looking for her 500th career singles match win on Sunday, but will have to wait until her next tournament to become the 27th woman to reach the half-thousand milestone.

"The level of our match was just incredible," Dementieva said. "The whole week, Amélie was playing very solid. She really picked up her game and played her best, especially today. It was a really impressive win for her today. I'm just very glad for her. She has had some difficult times with all of those injuries, and it's really great to see her win here, especially since it's at home."

Cara Black and Liezel Huber won their first title of the year and their 23rd as a team in the doubles event, outlasting Kveta Peschke and Lisa Raymond in the final in a match tie-break, 64 36 104. Black and Huber, co-ranked No.1 in the world and the top seeds at the Open GDF SUEZ, won one title together in 2001 and two more in 2006, but have been on top of the doubles world for over two years now, having won a phenomenal nine in 2007 and 10 more in 2008.

"We're very excited about our first title of the year," said Black, who now has 47 Tour doubles titles; Huber now has 35. "It was a great match today against two great players. We had such a good year last year, achieving so much, so our expectations are high and we are happy to have found our form again."

"Today was one of the best wins. We have won Grand Slams, we have won the Sony Ericsson Championships, but this win today really proved something to us," Huber said. "It is our first title of the year so we are happy about the win here at the Open GDF SUEZ. When I came here this week I was still jetlagged from Fed Cup but we've worked really hard and the result was the way we wanted it."

See photos in the Photo Gallery presented by Dubai Duty Free.