Daniilidou/Peng stun Huber/Raymond in round two – Western and Southern Open 2012
Wild card recipients, Greece’s Eleni Daniilidou and China’s Shuai Peng, surprised everyone after upsetting the top seeded local stars, Liezel Huber and Lisa Raymond, in straight sets at the Western and Southern Open 2012 on Thursday. They nudged up a 6-4,
6-4 victory over the Americans to cruise into the quarter-finals at the Lindner Family Tennis Center in Mason, Ohio.
The Greek-Chinese collaboration displayed perfect co-ordination to outclass Huber and Raymond in their first outing. After dumping the Olympic semi-finalists in one hour and nine minutes, Daniilidou and Peng secured a spot in the final eight at this outdoor
hard court tournament.
The unseeded duo made a drastic entry at this WTA (Women’s Tennis Association) Premier Five event. They suffered the first blow in the third game and went 1-3 down. Daniilidou and Peng recovered in the sixth game but lost their serve again in the very next
game. However, the Greek-Chinese pair not only snatched their break back in the eighth game but cashed in another break chance in the last game, eventually sealing the opener by winning six games to four.
Daniilidou and Peng lost their track again towards the follow-up set and gifted away their serve in the third game to trail at 1-2. However, they made a fitting replay and reeled off the proceeding four games to jump to a 5-2 lead. Apart from losing their
edge in the ninth game, the Greek-Chinese duo broke their opponents’ serve once again in the last game and clinched the set with a 6-4 score line.
All in all, the underdogs amazingly warded off nine out of 13 breakpoints they faced. They also capitalised on six out of 10 break chances to earn the glory. The Greek-Chinese junction also jolted down a better first serve share of 72 per cent as opposed
to the top seeds’ 60 per cent and acceptably clicked 26 out of 43 points on it.
Next up for Daniilidou and Peng are the eighth seeds, Katarina Srebotnik and Jie Zheng/ The Slovenian-Chinese tandem bounced over the Russian-Georgian pair, Ekaterina Makarova and Anna Tatishvili, in three sets to set up this battle.
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