Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova defeats Nuria Llagostera Vives in the third round – French Open 2011
World number fifteen Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova recovered from a first-set hiccup 3-6, 6-3, 6-3 to oust Nuria Llagostera Vives of Spain in the third round of 2011 French Open.
The Russian required 131 minutes to defeat the Spaniard, who was aiming to reach the fourth round of the tournament.
In the hot and humid conditions at Stade Roland Garros on Friday, the Russian seemed to fight with her form in the beginning stages of the contest. Pavlyuchenkova’s victory
was all the more exciting for the way she broke back from the downfall of dropping her serve to lose the first set, before finally marching towards the fourth round.
Critical break for the Russian came in the eighth game of the deciding set where she never looked like squandering her chances and broke the nervous Spaniard to close out
the match in style.
Pavlyuchenkova kicked off the match on a very bad note as she was broken a couple of times, allowing her Spaniard opponent to take the lead 6-3. Though she made a shaky
start, she came back very strongly and started to control the rallies from the back of the court and managed to win the final set with a 6-3 score line.
The Moscow native repeated the same story in the final set and she constantly fired number of forehand winners down the line and her Spaniard opponent just did not know
how to respond to a storm of those flashing shots. Her tremendous performance gave her the final set with 6-3 score line.
Pavlyuchenkova earned her straight sets victory by virtue of twenty five winners against 35 unforced errors. Furthermore, she scored 67 percent of points on her service,
47 percent of points on return and a total of 98 points in the match. By contrast, Vives remained behind in every segment with a meager 29 percent on her second serve, 43 percent on return and a total of 90 points.
The Russian pro has extended her year-to-date win loss mark to 26-9 matches and has set up a last-sixteen clash with compatriot Vera Zvonareva, who is seeded third at the
tournament.
Pavlyuchenkova and Zvonareva will do the battle for the second time in their careers during the fourth-round action at the French Open on Saturday and their head-to-head
record stands at 1-0 in Zvonareva’s favour. Zvonareva ended the inspiring run of Australian Anastasia Rodionova and Sabine Lisicki in the first two rounds to make it this far.
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