Tennis was not meant to be played in high winds, so when gusts of 20-30 miles per hour overwhelm a tennis match, the losing player can’t be blamed for inferior execution. The survivor should be saluted for enduring incredibly difficult conditions.

Consider Vera Zvonareva, then, one of the better survival stories on the WTA Tour.

The Russian, whose frail nerves set back her career for a number of years, has–at the somewhat advanced tennis age of 24–ripened into a steely competitor with a prize worthy of her gifts. Zvonareva won her first-ever BNP Paribas Open title on Sunday in Indian Wells, Calif., defeating Ana Ivanovic, 7-6 (5), 6-2, in a wind-blown final.

Ivanovic dictated this match, for better or worse, by hitting impressive winners on one point and missing makeable shots on the next. Given the whipping winds that turned almost every groundstroke into a nasty, sidewinding curveball, it was hard to blame Ivanovic for many of her misses on shots that became comically difficult because of the absurd spins and loops taken by the wind-whipped ball. Nevertheless, Zvonareva withstood the weather and her opponent long enough to find the winner’s circle.

Ivanovic had two good looks on set points at the end of the first set, with Zvonareva serving at 5-6, but the fickle winds carried the Serbian’s shots astray. One chip forehand pass floated just beyond the baseline, and a backhand drive on a service return found the middle of the net.

Zvonareva held for 6-all and a first-set tiebreak. Once in the tennis equivalent of a crap shoot, the fourth-seeded Russian would emerge with a stranglehold on the match, as Ivanovic–after hitting a beautiful overhead to gain a 5-4 lead in the breaker–lost the plot in the final three points to give Zvonareva the first set, and the enormous psychological edge that came with it.

Precisely because playing in strong winds is such a mentally taxing proposition for a tennis player, the loser of the first set was going to have a huge uphill battle. Unsurprisingly, the fifth-seeded Ivanovic–who was defending her 2008 title in Indian Wells–wilted as the second set developed. In response, Zvonareva–knowing she merely needed to get out of the way and give Ivanovic every chance to make mistakes–played solid, high-percentage tennis to finish off her landmark victory.

It’s not common for 24-year-olds to win titles as big as Indian Wells after years in the tennis wildnerness, but Vera Zvonareva has done exactly that. A career-long survivor fittingly braved the kinds of winds that had battered her psyche in the past. Newly tough and unflappable, this rising Russian–who took a big step forward in late January by reaching her first Grand Slam semifinal at the Australian Open–is gaining enough confidence to make a serious run at a Grand Slam that would make her career complete.

First things first, though: Zvonareva has just claimed the biggest win of her life. Even greater prizes can wait for another day; this 24-year-old warrior has earned the right to celebrate, and to reflect on a long journey that just became a whole lot sweeter.