Ana Ivanovic grills Francesca Schiavone to progress in round two – Dubai Championships 2012
Former world number one, Ana Ivanovic, grilled the Italian tennis icon, Francesca Schiavone, to book a berth in round two of the Dubai Duty Free Championships on Tuesday. She maintained her unbeaten run against the Italian in their
fourth face-off with a straight sets triumph 6-1, 7-5. She took just an hour and 41 minutes to oust the seventh seed participant.
The Serbian tennis queen commenced the match in aclassic fashion; winning the first five games of the opening set including a couple of breakthroughs that completely broke her opponent. She spared just one game for her opponent
before squashing her confidence and registering a resounding lead.
Nothing was going in favour of the Italian and she looked extremely frustrated at her dismal game play. She was no way near her supreme form and her shots were wayward on most of the occasions, especially her favourite forehand
thumping winners were landing out of the bounds of the court.
Schiavone gathered herself in the break and came back as a much more improved contestant; holding on to her serves in the opening four games and keeping to scores close at 2-2. A swap of breakpoints witnessed scores ticking over
to 3-3 and without further drama scores progressed to 4-4.
Both players broke each other thrice in succession with Ivanovic gobbling up two crucial breakpoints to take the lead in the set with 7-5. She served for the match and registered a resounding triumph over her opponent that kept
her unbeaten run against the Italian intact.
Ivanovic said in a post-match interview, "Francesca stepped up and really hung in there and gave me a tough match in the second set. It's such a small draw, so you can't really get any easy matches. And Francesca and I always have
long and tough matches. I was impressed the way I started the match and played that first set, because I knew it was probably not going to last in the second set."
Earlier in the day Daniela Hantuchova of Slovakia saved an upset by bouncing back from being a set down to oust the Slovenian competitor, Polona Hercog, in a gruelling three-setter. Agnieszka Radwanska, Lucie Safarova, Simona Halep
and Shuai Peng also won their respective encounter on Tuesday. Dominika Cibulkova unfortunately incurred a hamstring injury and retired in a match against Iveta Benesova. The tournament is heating up with top players making registering remarkable showdowns
at Dubai.
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