Anastasiya Yakimova reigns over Valeria Savinykh in the 1st round – Baku Cup 2011
Tuesday July 19, 2011 saw the second day of the first round of the Baku Cup 2011, Baku, Azerbaijan. Although, the two players were meeting each other for the first time at the Baku Tennis Academy on acrylic hard courts, they had met once prior to this event. It was an easy victory for the Belarusian, Anastasiya Yakimova against her Russian opponent Valeria Savinykh, winning 6-3,6-4.
Familiar with each other’s style and performance both had met in 2010 on the hard courts at the Nantes tournament, Nantes, France where they had faced each other in the third round of the match. Valeria had won the match 6-2,6-1 and also their head to head lead 1-0.
After winning the toss the Russian opened the set confidently and smashed two aces, and played an exceptional serve winning ninety one percent of her total first serve points. However, she faltered at her accuracy a number of times and struck five double faults out of which three hit the net while the remaining were line faults along with a poor return game she had started to slip in her performance and her opponent caught up on this and took full advantage of her failure.
Initially, Anastasiya was dominated by her opponent but got back into the game in time for her to win fifty percent of her break point chances and with a strong defence she took charge winning the set 6-3
The second was to be played and both the contesters wanted to win this match and gain a competitive edge over the other; this time Anastasiya opened the set with a steady and consistent serve and although she threw no aces she had again faltered at her accuracy and hit two line faults and one hit the net. Valeria was not at all dominated by her presence instead she stood up to her opponent and performed much better than the first set.
Both the players were neck on neck but Anastasiya won the set because of only two more points in the total set due to her winning seventy five percent of her break points she gained the upper hand and won the set 6-4.
Summing it up; although both the players had performed satisfactorily, Anastasiya had worked on taking any opportunity that came her way and because of a consistent second set gained the edge that she needed to equalize her head to head score with and hence won the match with a 2-0 lead.
The world number 88, Anastasiya Yakimova, will now be facing Mariya Koryttseva, in the second round of the Baku Cup 2011.
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