Alona Bondarenko, Petra Martic progress into the second round – e-Boks Sony Ericsson Open 2011
Alona Bondarenko passed her first test at the 2011 e-Boks Sony Ericsson Open with flying colours on Monday, as she defeated world number 145 Olga Savchuk in the first round.
Bondarenko, 26-years-old and 114th in the rankings, got her fans' hearts racing when she went down an early break, but as the match wore on it was the Ukrainian who executed the clutch moments better, saving two of four
break points against the Russian to record a 6-4, 6-3 victory.
Bondarenko, the unseeded player at the tournament, came out looking very sharp as she took on Savchuk in the fourth match of the day. She quickly burst out to a 4-1 lead and hung tough even after Savchuk closed the gap to 5-4,
digging out a series of blazing shots out before her opponent’s forehand sailed out; Bondarenko sealed the first set, 6-4.
However, Savchuk rebounded early in the second set, building her own 3-1 lead, but with a lot of untimely unforced errors she allowed that lead go and soon Bondarenko found her groove to take the score at 3-all. Serving to stay
in the match, Savchuk once again served up her third double-fault of the match and from there onwards, it was all over for the younger of the two Ukrainians, as Bondarenko’s 6-4, 6-3 victory was complete.
Bondarenko expressed her views in a post match interview, saying, “It was a good match for me, I'm feeling good and I am playing better and better with every match. I'm very happy to win."
Next up for Bondarenko will be the German Kathrin Woerle in the second round of the tournament. Both Players have already met each other at two different occasions and their head-to-head sequence is tied at 1-all.
Besides Bondarenko, Petra Martic of Croatia also registered an impressive 6-2, 6-2 win against her 20-year-old Russian opponent, Vitalia Diatchenko in the first round of the tournament.
In a match-up between the two 20-year-old players, it was Martic, who came out dialled in, hitting her glamorous ground strokes to perfection to win the first set with utmost ease. Diatchenko, on the other hand made a good start
to the second set and quickly build a 2-1 second set lead, but errors started creeping in, and Martic just sensed it.
Martic, the 20-year-old tennis player from Split, Croatia, cut back on her own errors and started using her full all-court arsenal as well as her big serve to claim the second set 6-2.
The Croat will have to wait to know her second round opponent until the clash between the sixth seeded Anastasija Sevastova of Latvia and Simona Halep of Romania is settled on Monday. The winner of the two will square off against
Martic in the second round of the e-Boks Sony Ericsson Open on Tuesday.
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