Christina McHale stuns Caroline Wozniacki in the first round brawl – AEGON International 2012
Upsets kept coming in the opening round of the AEGON International in Eastbourne, United Kingdom, with several big names falling out of the tournament cheaply. Former world number one, Caroline Wozniacki of Denmark, was also among the early victims of the grass-court event, bowing out to the 20-year-old American contender, Christina McHale, in a gruelling three-setter.
The 30th ranked American youngster took two hours and 31 minutes to turn the tables on the world number seven, settling the clash at 6-1, 6-7(7), 6-4, to reach the round of 16 of the tournament in style. McHale suffered a cracking straight sets defeat at the hands of the Dane last year in New Haven but her Tuesday’s win gave her a 2-1 lead in the head-to-head combats with the former world number one.
Wozniacki was off to a pathetic start in the opening set, dropping her serve three times in succession to suffer a breadstick right away. She gradually gathered up some pace in the following set and dragged the scores to 6-6, enforcing a tie-breaker round into play. The decider also went to the wire and the third seed Dane eventually closed out the second set at 7-6(7) to bring the matchup back on even terms.
It appeared for a while as if Wozniacki has found her winning groove and will bag the final set to come out as the winner but it went the other way round. A dominating performance from the 20-year-old American stunned everyone in the crowd, as McHale came up with two crucial break point conversions to register a huge upset in the tournament.
"I'm really excited to have pulled that one out, because it kept going back and forth," McHale said. "I had the break in the third set so I definitely wasn't excited it went back to 4-all, but I just tried to keep doing what I had been doing, just taking one point at a time and not thinking about the lead I had missed. I didn't start off really well, but in the second set I found my game. The level of tennis raised from both of us, and in the third set it could have gone either way," Wozniacki said. "I would have liked to win, but at least I got some points in. I'm just trying to work on a few things before Wimbledon. That's it.”
McHale will play against the unseeded Russian, Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, in the second round draw of the tournament.
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