Dinara Safina/Agnes Szavay take down Kristina Barrois/Jasmin Woehr at the Andalucia Tennis Experience doubles
Former world number one Dinara Safina of Russia and Agnes Szavay of Hungary beat the German duo of Kristina Barrois and Jasmin Woehr in the quarter-final of the doubles category of the Andalucia Tennis Experience at Marbella,
Spain on Thursday. The winning pair took one hour and twenty seven minutes to settle the hard-fought clash at 3-6, 6-2, 11-9, to get a pass to the semi-final of the $220,000 WTA (Women’s Tennis Association) tournament.
The contest looked fairly poised and the competitors put up a great show of professional tennis. The German team had the initial advantage by winning the opening set but kept losing their steam as the contest progressed.
Safina and Szavay took off sluggishly and kept building on pace in the later parts of the game to eventually come out as the winners.
The two pairs delivered their first serve with identical accuracy of 70 per cent and took almost similar number of points on it in the game. Minor differences were observed in the overall match statistics of the two teams
but the German duo lacked mental resilience in the game, an inability which wore them out later in the game.
Barrois and Woehr were off to a flyer and secured break point in the very first game of the opener, only to be broken in the very next. A series of serve breaks was then witnessed at Marbella, with the two teams exchanging
three break points each to take the score to 3-3. Safina and Szavay dropped their game from then onwards and started playing errant strokes to assist their opponents take a commanding position in the contest.
The German pair pressurized their rivals to commit silly mistakes, and Szavay obliged by thumping some juicy volleys into the net. A serve break from Barrois and Woehr in the eighth game made their task pretty much easier
and they served out of the opening set at 6-3 to lead the competition 1-0.
Tide turned in the next set with Safina leading her side from the front, clouting plenty of cross-court winners to break the shackles. Safina and Szavay broke early to lead 3-1 in the second set with their 77 per cent first
serve. The German duo stung a serve break to cut the deficit to 2-3 but couldn’t withstand the fury of their opponents. Safina and Szavay finished their demolition job by sealing the second set at 6-2, imposing a third.
The decider went on neck-to-neck but Safina and Szavay reeled off three consecutive points to race past to victory at 11-9. They await the conclusion of the third quarter-final which will be played between the third seed
Spanish pair of Nuria Llagostera Vives and Arantxa Parra Santonja, competing against the team of Mervana Jugic-Salkic and Darija Jurak. The winner of the two will square off against Safina and Szavay for a title shot in the final of the Andalucia Tennis Experience.
Tags: