MADRID, Spain - Italians Sara Errani and Roberta Vinci won their ninth and by far biggest WTA doubles title together on Saturday night, defeating Russia's Ekaterina Makarova and Elena Vesnina in the Mutua Madrid Open final.

Errani and Vinci, whose eight previous titles all came at the International level, were the No.5 seeds and upheld their favorite status, rebounding from a second set slump to beat the unseeded Russians in a match tie-break, 61 36 104.

"We played good tennis this week and were able to win our biggest title yet," Vinci said. "Now we're looking forward to playing in our home country in Rome."

"We have been working hard and trying to do our best to make the Olympics and the WTA Championships," Errani said. "We're happy to win the title in Madrid. They played a very good match today but we found a way to win."

And there was icing on the cake for Errani and Vinci - two layers of it, in fact. Firstly, they both broke into the Top 10 in doubles for the first time, Errani rising from No.12 to No.8 and Vinci No.13 to No.9. Secondly, they passed Liezel Huber and Lisa Raymond for first in the Race to the WTA Championships.

Speaking of Huber and Raymond, the co-World No.1s were stunned in their opening match by Dominika Cibulkova and Janette Husarova, 46 76(6) 1513, after holding seven match points too - two in the second set tie-break and five more in the match tie-break. Cibulkova and Husarova converted their first.

Makarova and Vesnina still had a lot of positives to take out of the week, having upset No.3 seeds Andrea Hlavackova and Lucie Hradecka to make the final.

"We didn't expect that we would be so successful this week," Vesnina said. "Ekaterina and I really enjoy playing together and we're really happy to be in the final of a big event here in Madrid. Today we lost to a very good team, one of the best doubles teams in the world. They deserved the win more than we did today.

"We're a little upset but next week is another big event. Maybe we'll be luckier."