Tight Ancic Hands Nieminen ATP Auckland Trophy

"It's difficult to put my feelings and emotions into words," said Nieminen after becoming the first Finn to ever win an ATP title. "It really feels great to finally win a title. I've played well in many semifinals and finals but then haven't been able to finish it, but now I've finally won a title so it feels unbelievable...I made it very simple and it worked very well. I was solid and Mario made some unforced errors."

With the loss Ancic reinforces his reputation as a big-match choker, dropping to 1-4 in finals, with even a strong Croatian crowd contingent failing to steady his nerve.

"Jarkko was playing his game very solid today, he was the better player. This is sport, nothing really worked the way I wanted," Ancic said. "I'm really happy having played four matches extremely well with unbelievable tempo coming into the final. Today I was really flat but I have to take the positive away from the four good matches I played and focus for Melbourne."

In the end Ancic averaged approximately two unforced errors per game throughout the match.

"I was surprised how easy it was today," Nieminen said. "All of the time I expected Mario to come back. I noticed that if I moved him around, he was making some unforced errors. I had to concentrate and keep my game solid and simple and not to try anything special."

In the doubles final the Romanian/Dutch unseeded team of Andrei Pavel/Rogier Wassen used the ATP's new third-set match tiebreak system to shock the top-seeded team of Simon Aspelin/Todd Perry 6-3, 5-7, 10-4.