Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova cruises past Maria Sanchez into third round – China Open 2011
Thirteenth seeded Russian Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova cruised into the third round of the 2011 China Open in Beijing, China on Tuesday, October 3rd after doing away with the unseeded Spaniard Maria Jose Martinez Sanchez
in their second round match.
Playing at the National Tennis Center, the Russian toiled it out for an hour and thirty three minutes before securing a 6-2, 6-3 win over the Spaniard.
The Russian opened serve and comfortably made her way to the scoreboard, followed shortly by the Spaniard. Standing at 2-1, Pavlyuchenkova broke Sanchez at 15-40 to go 3-1 in the lead. The fifth game was perhaps the longest of
the match with eight deuces. After several long rallies, the Spaniard broke the Russian. However, all the hard work was to no avail since the Russian broke back in the sixth game to maintain the two game lead. Holding her serve in the seventh game, Pavlyuchenkova
once more broke the Spaniard to clinch a 6-2 win.
Despite hitting four double faults and only one ace, Pavlyuchenkova was able to secure a 77 percent win on her first serve as she went one up in the set score.
Riding her first set win, Pavlyuchenkova rushed to an early 3-0 lead as she broke her opponent in the second game. What followed next was a series of breakpoints exchanged between the two players as the Spaniard tried to reduce
the deficit. However, leading the set score 5-3, the Russian served out the set to secure a 6-3 win, sealing her straight sets win.
Converting three of seven breakpoint opportunities, Pavlyuchenkova clinched a total of 39 of 73 points along with four double faults to seal her straight sets win. With this win the Russian has now levelled her head-to-head score
with the Spaniard. Sanchez had earlier defeated the Russian in their first round match at the Rogers Cup earlier in the year.
The Russian now moves on ahead to play either the second seeded Belarusian Victoria Azarenka or the unseeded Slovak, Polona Hercog in the third round of the event. The Russian had earlier enjoyed a 7-5, 6-4 win over Czech Barbora
Zahlavova Strycova in the opening round here.
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