former world No. 1, Justine Henin, in her second match-up. At the beginning of May, Kanepi won ten straight matches to claim her seventh and eighth career ITF tournaments. She qualified for the French Open, where she defeated Pauline Parmentier in the first round. She pushed world No. 4, Jelena Janković, to three sets before losing in round two. This allowed her ranking to re-enter the top 100. At the Internazionali di Palermo, Kanepi won her first WTA career singles title. She defeated top seed Flavia Pennetta for the title. At the start of the grass-court season, she reached the quarterfinals as a qualifier at Aegon Classic in Birmingham, defeating 12th seed Elena Baltacha, Jarmila Groth, and Michelle Larcher de Brito en route, before losing to top seed and eventual champion Li Na. Kanepi then qualified for the Wimbledon Championships, defeating Olga Savchuk, Elena Bovina, and Ajla Tomljanović in straight sets. In the first round, Kanepi caused a big upset when she defeated world No. 6 and French Open finalist, Samantha Stosur. She then defeated Edina Gallovits in the second round, and world No. 31 Alexandra Dulgheru in round three. Kanepi then reached her second Grand Slam quarterfinal, when she defeated Klára Zakopalová in the fourth round. In the quarterfinals, Kanepi lost a tough three-set match to Petra Kvitová, despite having a total of five match points and being a double break up in the final set. With her success at Wimbledon, Kanepi's ranking rose to world No. 38. Kanepi next played at the Swedish Open. She fell in the first round to fifth seed Arantxa Parra Santonja. However, she continued her strong play at the Palermo Ladies Open where, as the fifth seed, she defeated Rossana de los Ríos, Raluca Olaru, third seed Sara Errani and Romina Oprandi to reach her third WTA Tour final. In the final, Kanepi defeated top seed, world No. 12, and defending champion Flavia Pennetta, not dropping a set in the whole tournament to claim her first WTA career title. Kanepi was seeded 31st at the US Open where she defeated Alizé Cornet, Akgul Amanmuradova, fourth seed Jelena Janković and 15th seed Yanina Wickmayer to advance to her first US Open quarterfinal, where she lost to the seventh seed and eventual runner-up Vera Zvonareva. Kanepi then entered the Pan Pacific Open and defeated Melanie Oudin in the first round. She then upset 13th seed