Ayumi Morita breezes past Shuai Zhang into 2nd round – HP Japan Open 2011
Sixth seeded Ayumi Morita avenged her loss against Chinese Shuai Zhang in the first round of the HP Japan Open 2011. After one hour and forty minutes sixth seeded Japanese got rid of the Chinese on outdoor hard courts of the Utsubo
Tennis Center in Osaka, Japan in straight sets of 7-6(3), 6-2.
The initial round of the match was inaugurated by Chinese Zhang, who expertly handled her first serve and even capitalized on an early break in the second game to place herself on the scoreboard at 2-0. She again repeated the feat
and by the end of the fourth game was leading with a 4-0.
It was in the fifth game that Morita made a comeback and she broke back and as she held serve she reduced the deficit to 2-4. She too repeated the break-serve technique and equalized the score at 4-4 by the end of the eighth game.
As the players kept matching a blow for a blow eventually the set was pushed into a tiebreaker at 6-6 at the end of the twelfth game.
The toe-to-toe run between the two lost steam in the tiebreaker, as the Japanese took the lead with a series of breaks and holds to clinch a 7-3 against the Chinese. Morita won the tiebreaker and in doing so, she was now one up
in the match.
Serving for the second set was Morita and both the players successfully placed themselves at 1-1 by holding their service games at the end of the first two games. In the third and the fourth game, the players broke each other one
after the other and the score again tied at 2-2.
After holding her serve in the fifth game, Morita went on to capitalizing from another break and was first to take the lead at 4-2. During the last two games the sixth seeded Japanese cut the match short by not only holding her
serve but by pressurising her opponent to double fault, she clogged the set and the match.
The sixth seeded Japanese accomplished a spot in the second round of the event where she will be facing the Greek Eleni Daniilidou.
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