Anastasia Rodionova escapes Lesya Tsurenko to reach round two - Osprey Challenger 2012
Australian eighth seed, Anastasia Rodionova, escapes an upset at the hands of the 22-years-old Ukrainian, Lesya Tsurenko, in the opening round clash of the Osprey Challenger. It was a very entertaining three-setter ending in the
favour of the 99th ranked Aussie 7-5, 3-6, 6-3.
Both players had played before this year in the Sony Ericsson Open at Miami. It was the first qualifying round and Rodionova had an easy straight sets triumph at the hard courts. She definitely struggled a lot to make an impact
at the clay courts but fortunately sneaked away with a win to start her campaign.
Tsurenko commenced the match with a serve hold and both opponents kept on capitalizing their serves until the scores tickled over to 5-5. Finally the first breakthrough of the match was witnessed when the Aussie starlet smashed
an eye-startling winner down the line to convert her first allotted breakpoint. The Ukrainian had her opponent under the cosh in the final game of the first set but she couldn’t do the heroics like her rival.
The second set was completely hijacked by the Ukrainian who raced away with a lead of 3-0 at the start. She had already broken once and repeated the similar performance in the ninth game to register another breakthrough that enforced
the third set into play. The momentum was with her and situation was also favourable.
All of a sudden, the Aussie player found her sublime form; smashed her opponent to all corners of the courts and didn’t allow her to settle at all in the final battle. She started off with a serve hold and broke serve in the following
game to take a lead of 2-0.
Tsurenko was unable to handle this onslaught and dropped another serve game on her way that donated the triumph to her opponent. It was a dominating performance from the eighth seed in the final set that must have boosted her morale
after faulting miserably in the second part of the match.
She, along with the top seed Czech, Lucie Hradecka, marches on into the second round of the tournament.
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