Anabel Medina Garrigues, Ani Mijacika race into the second round – XXIV SNAI Open 2011
Spanish tennis player Anabel Medina Garrigues took on Italian Anna Floris in the first round of the 2011 XXIV SNAI Open, being played here at Palermo, Italy.
Defeating her opponent in straight sets 6-3, 6-3, Garrigues successfully made it to the second round of the tournament.
The 28-year-old Spaniard had already snuffed out the threat of the big serving Floris and had no problems in disabling her opponents much touted missiles.
Against one of the fine returner’s on the WTA tour, Floris’s first serve badly marooned her and the poor winning percentage laid the foundation for her downfall.
Serving at 70 percent had never been a good ratio to impress the Spaniard No.1, who easily swallowed down Floris’s second serve, limiting the Italian to win just 25 percent of her second serves.
It was a never-ending struggle for the Italian to hold her serve, but once her major weapon failed to fire, the other parts of her game simply fell away.
Floris’s forehand was toothless throughout the match, and Garrigues cruellywhipped her weaker wing, extracting a staggering number of unforced errors from her racket, who lost the first set with a 6-3 score line.
Realizing the fact that it was her last chance to cause any upset, Floris decided to get more daring as the second set popped up, but the Italian lady was playing very awkwardly at the net and then dumping a quite few easy volleys,
she lost the second set with the same score line.
The sad smile on Floris’s face at the end of the match was a solid proof that she had been given some perfect lessons on the dynamics of clay court and will look to improve her game in the up-coming tournaments.
As for Garrigues, she marches on into the second round where her compatriot Lara Arruabarrena-Vecino awaits her.
Unlike Garrigues, who cruised through the opening round without much of fuss, Ani Mijacika of Croatia had a much tougher passage into the second round, requiring three sets to see off Eleni Daniilidou here at Palermo, Italy.
Mijacika committed the inexcusable crime of dropping her serve in the very first game of the match and Daniilidou applied the appropriate punishment by clinching it with a 6-3 score line.
After losing the opener, the Croat, however, managed to offer a great deal of resistance, withstanding a barrage of bruising forehands from the Greek and managed to strike what seemed to be the decisive blow by breaking Daniilidou’s
serve and clinching the remaining two sets with a pretty similar score line.
Next up for the Croat qualifier is the fourth-seeded Klara Zakopalova in the second round of XXIV SNAI Open here today.
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