France's Sebastien Grosjean won his first title of the season by landing the St Petersburg Open on Sunday.

The Davis Cup star, set to take a leading role when the French take on Russia in this year's final, upset the home crowd by beating Russian Mikhail Youzhny.

Seeded third, Grosjean got the better of unseeded Youzhny in a tight encounter, winning 7-5 6-4.

Afterwards, Grosjean said: "I'm really happy to win my first title of the year, especially the way I played this week. It was not easy today as Mikhail is a good player who wanted to win in front of his home crowd."

"After I won the first set, he had a chance to break me at the beginning of the second but he did not take it. Maybe he was a little bit nervous as he badly wanted to win.

"I just played the same way from the beginning to the end. I played a solid match like all week here."

Next for Grosjean is the chance to play in his home country at the BNP Parisbas Masters.

"It's very important to go into such a big event with a few wins under your belt," he added.

"I had a good week in Madrid and I won my first title here. In Paris I will play on Wednesday so I have a couple of days to rest."

Youzhny, who failed in his bid to become the third Russian winner in St Petersburg after Yevgeny Kafelnikov (1995) and Marat Safin (2000 and 2001), was reasonably pleased with his performance despite the loss.

"I made a few mistakes but thought I played OK," he said. "The key was when I dropped my serve at 5-6 to lose the first set. I think only a couple of points decided the match."

"I do hope I will have more chances to play better here in the future as I love to play in Russia. We have only two events, Moscow and St Petersburg.

It's great to play at home with the crowd support."

"Sebastien played good tennis today, no mistakes. Every time he was 0-30 or 15-30 on his serve he came up with a few big serves."