2011 Sony Ericsson Open WTA Part 12: Flavia Pennetta and Kaia Kanepi
World Number 17 Flavia Pennetta
Flavia Pennetta is currently ranked World Number 17, making her the second-highest ranked Italian player on the Women’s Tennis Association after 2010 French Open champion Francesca Schiavone. Pennetta has been part of the WTA since 2000, and has spent almost
exactly eleven years as a professional tennis pro. She is 29 years old, and has won a total of nine WTA singles titles. Her highest ranking to date is World Number 10; she was also the first Italian tennis player ever to break into the Top 10.
The Italian pro first played at Miami in 2003, when she was ranked World Number 67. Her first opponent was Angelique Widjaja, whom she defeated in straight sets in the first round. The player went on to defeat Croat and twenty-ninth seed Iva Majoli in the
second round before falling to seventh seed Lindsay Davenport in the round of the last 32.
Her first showing as a seeded player was in 2005, when she was World Number 29. The Italian entered the tournament as the twenty-sixth seed, and received a bye into the second round where she faced and defeated Maria Sanchez Lorenzo. Her victory over the
Spanish player led her to a third round match against fifth seed Anastasia Myskina, who ousted her in straight sets.
Pennetta has taken part in the Sony Ericsson Open seven times, but has never made it past the third round of the tournament. Last year, she was seeded tenth and dropped her opening match against Germany’s Andrea Petkovic in three sets. This year at the 2011
Sony Ericsson Open, she was defeated by Iveta Benesova in the second round of the tournament again.
World Number 16 Kaia Kanepi
At World Number 16, Kaia Kanepi is the highest-ranked Estonian tennis player in the world. She is also the first player from that country to bring into the Top Ten, and has been playing as a pro since 2000. The 25-year-old has won one singles title over
the course of her career.
Kanepi made an impressive debut at the Miami tournament in 2007. She was ranked World Number 56 at the time, and made it past players Tsvetana Pironkova and eleventh seed Patty Schnyder to get to the third round, where Russian pro Vera Dushevina defeated
her in straight sets.
Although Kanepi made it to the fourth round of the event in 2008, she was unable to reproduce these results and fell in the first round of the 2010 Sony Ericsson Open to Czech player Lucie Hradecka. She was seeded fourteenth at the tournament this year,
but fell to Virginie Razzano of France in her opening match.
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