Anja Prislan ousts Ai Koga in the first round – LIC ITF Women's Tennis Championships 2011
Sixth seeded Slovenian, Anja Prislan traumatized the lucky loser of Japan, Ai Koga, in the first round of 2011 LIC ITF Women's Tennis Championship, hosted in Pune, India. The match was totally dominated by the sixth seeded Slovenian
that provided no opportunity whatsoever to her counterpart to have any sort of stronghold at any stage. She was prolific in her game play and took just an hour to overshadow Koga in straight sets 6-3, 6-3.
The match was played on hard courts and despite all her experience on this type of surface Japanese player couldn’t create any kind of impact in the game. It was probably due to her poor performance in the recent past, just one
win in ten matches that proved to be the main factor in her loss.
Prislan was very accurate with her shot selection and was totally on top of her game. She was also seeing some tough time at the courts but her performance was definitely better than her competitor as she had registered four victories
in her last ten encounters.
Everyone expected the result as seeded player is ought to win against a lucky loser. Sizeable crowd was present at the arena to witness this one-sided encounter. Considering the drought of world class tournaments contested in sub-continent,
people arrive in numbers to witness any type of tournament contested on their soil.
First set was completely hijacked by the sixth seed participant. She started off with couple of aces and held her serves that were coupled with a break to take the score to 4-1. Such a massive lead upfront proved too much to recover
for the Japanese who failed to grab the only breakpoint opportunity allotted to her.
Both players held their serves in the next four games and first set was over in a flash with no drama at all. Trailing one set down and competing against a superior ranked player, it needed a massive morale boost to recover the
deficit and get on top of the game. Koga didn’t have the same willpower and skill level to overpower her opponent after such a setback.
Koga started off the second set proceedings in dismal manner and lost the first game. A severe onslaught from the 26-year-old, Prislan, saw her seal three more games in quick succession. Crowd was excited to see some breathtaking
display of double-handed backhands from the winner. She went on to win the set with no major difficulty at all.
Anja Prislan faces-off against the winner of the match between Hsieh Shu-ying and Anamika Bhargava.
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