Andrea Petkovic beats Lucie Safarova in second round of BNP Paribas Open 2011
Andrea Petkovic of Germany beat her Czech opponent Lucie Safarova in the second round of the BNP Paribas Open 2011 at Indian Wells, California on Friday.
The German completed her straight sets victory 7-6, 7-5, taking 1 hour and 55 minutes to advance to the third round of the tournament.
The contest was evenly poised throughout, with the two competitors exhibiting a brilliant display of tennis. It was a serve-dominated game and no break points were observed in the opening set. Safarova delivered her 63 per cent serve on target, firing three
thudding aces and collecting 24 out of 30 first serve points. Her German opponent was equally good as she had a 68 per cent first serve accuracy and took 20 out of the 27 points in the first set.
No break chances were seen in the opening 10 games of the contest as the scoreboard kept ticking on even terms. The Czech spilled out four double faults in the opener and the fourth one at 5-6 gave Petkovic her first opportunity to break serve. The German
squandered the break point, dragging the first set to a tiebreaker round at 6-6.
Safarova was quick to get in the lead at 4-2 in the tiebreaker round but a couple of costly unforced errors let her opponent bounce back. Petkovic amazingly clinched three straight points to race away to 7-6, serving for the set. The German frittered away
the first set point but cashed in on the next one at 9-8 to seal the first set 7-6.
The second set took off in similar manner as the first one. No serve breaks were observed in the opening 10 games, with the contestants holding their serves to take the scores to 5-5. Petkovic served brilliantly with 81 per cent accuracy in the set while
her opponent struggled a bit with 54 per cent, including four costly double faults.
Petkovic finally crafted a triple-break point in the 11th game, converting the very first point to lead the set 6-5 serving for the match. The German had no difficulty in serving out of the contest at 7-5, booking a berth in the third round of
the Paribas Open.
The German has to face the 15th seed French, Marion Bartoli in the next round. The in-form Bartoli won her second round encounter against Romanian qualifier Monica Niculescu in a three set battle.
Tags: