Ana Ivanovic, playing her first match in Moscow, was eliminated in the second round today by Dominika Cibulkova, 3-6, 6-2, 7-6. (People told Cibulkova she was too short to play pro tennis, but she had the good sense not to listen to them.)
Amelie Mauresmo is also gone, defeated by Dinara Safina, 6-7, 6-4, 6-4. Safina served for the match at 3-5 in the third and was broken at love. It looked hopeful for Mauresmo at that point, but then Safina broke her right back.
First round play continued, too, with Nadia Petrova getting an easy win over Anna Lapushchenkova, 6-2, 6-1. Another Russian, Anna Chakvetadze, saw her hard times continue as she, too, fell in the first round, to Caroline Wozniacki, who defeated her 2-6, 6-1, 6-4.
Russians doing well in the second round were Svetlana Kuznetsova and Elena Demenieva. Kuznetsova defeated Sara Errani, 7-6, 6-1, and Dementieva defeated Katarina Srebotnik, 6-3, 4-6, 7-6. Dementieva double-faulted eight times, and hit eight aces. She used to just double-fault a lot, and now she is all over the place.
I saw both the Cibulkova/Ivanovic match and the Mauresmo Safina one.......both great to watch, for different reasons - the Cibulkova one was an absolute edge-of-the-seat nail biter(and have a close listen next time you hear Ivanovic playing.....her 'grunt' sounds as though she's saying 'a-Klingon! a-Klingon!'.... )and I've become quite a fan of Cibulkova: she's exciting to watch and I'm a similar height so that has me urging her on too :)
ReplyDeleteIt was lovely just to see Amelie playing, a little 'back to herself', and I'm sad she didn't manage to win, much as I like Dinara - but I think she played better than had been expected according to the commentators and she looked superb in that aqua colour(I feel a pair of socks coming onto my knitting needles). It was strange match - Safina seemed quite out of sorts with herself.
I'm quite the wee blether this morning!
cheers
Claire....Trekkie to the core :)
Yes, I heard that Safina looked like she was about to implode. I think she has worn herself out--probably more mentally than anything else. I hope she doesn't play both Zurich and Linz; I kind of wish she could skip both. If she plays both of them, I'll think she'll be toast by the time they get to Doha.
ReplyDelete"a-Klingon!" could explain a lot...