2011 French Open: Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova battles past Yaroslava Shvedova in the opening round
Fourteenth seeded Russian Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova dumped Kazakh Yaroslava Shvedova in straight sets in the first round match at the 2011 Roland Garros on Sunday. She registered a 7-5, 6-3 win over the 23-year-old Kazakh to advance
into the second round.
19-year-old Pavlyuchenkova is in great shape this season so far as she won a title at Monterrey. She reached far in other events as well and made it as far as the third round at Rome before entering Stade Roland Garros in full
confidence.
World number fifteen Russian put up a great show on her third meeting against a former top thirty, Shvedova and took ninety-seven minutes to succeed. Both veterans displayed their awe-inspiring skills throughout the match and displayed
their top notch skills but the seeded Russian triumphed over her to advance.
The teenager smoothly entered the opening set and after exchanging a break early on, she held her remaining serves to level the scores at 5-5. Pavlyuchenkova then converted second breakpoint opportunity to her advantage in the
last game to clinch the set with a 7-5 win in almost an hour.
She kept her momentum rolling in the final set where she held her entire serves spectacularly. Furthermore, Pavlyuchenkova broke the Kazakh’s serve twice to seal the set by winning six games to three in forty-five minutes. She
also saved the only breakpoint faced in this set.
The youngster committed 18 unforced errors and clobbered seven double faults. However, she converted four out of seven breakpoint opportunities to her advantage to seal the deal in a straight set victory.
The Kazakh on the other side of net has had a troublesome season so far and was at 3-10 win – loss record. She put up great show against the higher ranked Russian but couldn’t capitalise on many errors Pavlyuchenkova produced.
She eventually exited from Paris with huge disappointment and extended her losing streak to four matches.
Up next for the Russian is the German qualifier, Mona Barthel who trashed Austrian Sybille Bammer with a breadstick later that day. Pavlyuchenkova needs to ponder over her weaknesses and clobber less unforced errors to overpower
the in-form qualifier.
Another seeded Russian joining Pavlyuchenkova is the thirteenth seed Svetlana Kuznetsova. She trashed Slovak Maqdalena Rybarikova in straight sets by converting five out of sixteen breakpoint opportunities to her advantage. The
Russian took half hour to win the first set with an assuring 6-2 score line and pocket the second set with a 6-3 win in fifty minutes to advance in this tournament.
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