Anabel Medina Garrigues dumps Jie Zheng in the opening round – Internazionali BNL d’Italia 2012
Spanish veteran, Anabel Medina Garrigues, had a resounding start to her Internazionali BNL d’Italia campaign, ousting the Chinese tennis ace, Jie Zheng, in the opening round brawl on Monday. The world number 31 took just 77 minutes
to wrap up her thumping victory in straight sets, 6-2, 6-1, to clear the opening round of the WTA (Women’s Tennis Association) Premier 5 event being held in Rome, Italy.
It was the fifth battle between these two competitors, with a 2-2 head-to-head record prior to the Monday’s encounter. Garrigues was victorious in their last encounter of 2010 Madrid Open and she carried on with her winning impetus
to register her third victory over the 33rd ranked Chinese. It was a much needed victory for the Spaniard, who improved to 12-11 in the 2012 WTA season.
Zheng proved to be a total mismatch for the fury of Garrigues, who barely spared three games for her in the entire matchup. The unseeded Chinese utterly failed to register a single break point in the entire contest, frittering
away two vital opportunities to finish on the losing side in the end. Garrigues attained a 74 per cent precision on her first serve in the encounter, winning 25 out of 35 points on it and breaking the Chinese serve four out of eight times to come out as the
deserving winner.
The Spaniard got hold of the momentum right from the beginning and broke her opponent in her very first serve game to race away to 3-0 in no time. Zheng held her next two serves before dropping it once again in the eighth game
to gift away the opening set to her opponent at 2-6.
The following took off in exactly the similar fashion as the opener did, with the Spaniard breaking early to lead 3-0. Garrigues went with her impetus and nailed another vital break point in the sixth game to conclude her cracking
victory with a breadstick, 6-1.
Garrigues will next face the former world number one, Caroline Wozniacki of Denmark, in the second round of the Rome Masters. The sixth seed Dane received a bye to have a direct access to the second round of the main draw.
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