Donna Vekic and Yi-Miao Zhou reach the second round – Royal Indian Open 2012
Third seeded Croatian, Donna Vekic, had a thumping start to her Royal Indian Open campaign on Monday, registering an impressive 6-0, 6-1, victory over the bleak Thai opponent, Varatchaya Wongteanchai. She barely took 51 minutes to reach the second round of the inaugural edition of this WTA Challenger Series tournament in Pune, India.
It was an all-Croatian show which the local crowd witnessed at the outdoor hard courts. Vekic absolutely blasted her way through the 23-year-old Thai contender and gave her not a single chance to have any impact on the contest. The 118th ranked Croat delivered her first serve with 57 per cent precision and reeled off 17 out of 20 points on it. She crafted five break opportunities in the matchup and converted all of them to register the most assertive final score line.
Wongteanchai was nowhere near her opponent in any segment of the game. Her bleak serve could only yield her 9 out of 23 points and she utterly failed in creating a single break chance in the entire matchup. A total of 72 points were played in the contest, with Vekic amazingly winning 51 and her Thai opponent lagging far behind with merely 21 points.
Another match featured the same score line later that day and it was Yi-Miao Zhou of China who came out as the dominant winner. She overpowered her fellow compatriot, Yi-Fan Xu, in straight sets, 6-0, 6-1, to reach the pre-quarter-final stages of the tournament.
This matchup was no different from the Vekic’s encounter, except for Zhou stealing the show this time. The 21 year-old Chinese sustained her clean sheet over Xu, defeating her for the fifth straight time in her professional career and marking a 5-0 head-to-head lead. She delivered 56 per cent of her first serve on target, pocketing 20 out of 25 points on it and broke her rival’s serve six out of 10 times en route to victory. Xu could merely register one break point out of her three chances to finish on the losing side in the end. Zhou will either face the fifth seeded Japanese veteran, Kimiko Date-Krumm, or the local qualifier, Rishika Sunkara, in her next matchup.
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