Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova stuns Samantha Stosur; moves into the quarterfinal at the Mutua Madrid Open
World number twenty-one, Russian Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova upset world number eight, Australian Samantha Stosur in straight sets on Thursday. She registered a 7-6(4), 6-3 win over the 27-year-old Australian to advance into the quarter-finals
of the 2011 Mutua Madrilena Madrid Open.
19-year-old displayed exceptional skills to outplay the top ten player in one hour and thirty-seven minutes at Park Manzanares. She triumphed over the seed for the first time in their three meetings and lowered the trail in her
head-to-head series by 1-2 against the Australian.
The teenager is in awesome form this season and had won the title at Monterrey after defeating top seeded Serb Jelena Jankovic. In other tournaments, she played convincingly and played well. Pavlyuchenkova entered this tournament
confidently and trashed Chinese Jie Zheng and eleventh seeded French Marion Bartoli with breadsticks in the first two rounds.
Fifth seed Stosur on the other side of net had also been in good shape as she made a quarter-final berth at Dubai and reached semi-final at Stuttgart this season so far. After showing her tremendous skills at Stuttgart, she entered
into this WTA Premier Mandatory event confidently and overpowered Argentina Gisela Dulko and Slovak Daniela Hantuchova.
The youngster stormed in the first set and held her opening serve spectacularly. Despite committing two double faults and having lower first serve share, she held her entire serves by defending all three breakpoints faced. However,
Pavlyuchenkova failed to find any breakpoint opportunity and dragged the set to tie-breaker where she prevailed to clinch with a 7-6(4) win.
She carried her winning ways into the final set and held her serve in the first game. The Russian raised her level of game and produced a higher first serve share of 79 percent as compared to Australian’s 64 percent. She then went
on to hold her remaining serves smoothly by saving both breakpoints conceded. Pavlyuchenkova then converted the only breakpoint opportunity to her advantage in the fourth game to seal by winning six games to Stosur’s three.
Next up for the Russian is Julia Goerges. The German reached this spot after triumphing over the top seed and the world number one, Dane Caroline Wozniacki in three sets. Talking about her quarterfinal spot, Goerges said, "It's
my first time here and I'm in the quarterfinals. It's very nice and I hope to keep going. The next match is going to be the same as today, very tough. You only have the best players here. I'm really looking forward to it."
Another seed came crashing down in a night match later that day. Third seeded Italian Francesca Schiavone lost to American Bethanie Mattek-Sands in straight sets in one hour and thirty-five minutes.
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