Elena Vesnina triumphs over Shuai Peng to set up final meeting with Caroline Wozniacki at Charleston
Russian tennis player Elena Vesnina secured an easy victory over eleventh seed Shuai Peng at the 2011 Family Circle Cup earlier today, defeating her Chinese opponent in straight sets 7-6(4), 6-3. She locked a title match spot for
herself in a little under two hours.
Ranked World Number 56, Elena Vesnina joined the main draw at Charleston as an unseeded player. Her participation in the tournament remained iffy for quite some time, a fact she attested to in a post-semi interview saying, “four
weeks ago I thought I wouldn’t be able to play here. I had a serious wrist injury ... I love Charleston. I’ve been coming here I think six years in a row.” Peng, on the other hand, is ranked World Number 30 by the Women’s Tennis Association and was seeded
eleventh at the celebrated Premier event.
The match was a challenging one for Peng, who has won more main draw matches this year than any other player on the WTA. She managed to fire off two aces in the first set alone, and played an almost flawless game. She was broken
once, and returned the favour by breaking Vesnina back almost immediately. However, Vesnina seemed to be just as determined to win despite her underdog position and battled hard against Peng to bring her to a tiebreaker in the first set. She won this part
of the match 7-6(4) with a margin of just one point.
The shock of this loss seemed to stun Peng, and she played surprisingly awful tennis for the rest of the match. Although she managed to score one more ace, she was also broken three times and only converted two of her own break
points successfully. In addition to this, she also committed an inordinate number of unforced errors and seemed to lose the motivation to win the match. This helped Vesnina’s cause even further, and she sped ahead in the second set to win the match 7-6(4),
6-3.
This victory notches up two wins for Vesnina against Peng, bringing their head-to-head record to 4-2. Their first meeting was at the 2006 French Open, when both players were ranked outside the WTA Top 50. Peng won the match in
straight sets as the higher ranked player, and repeated the win with a double bagel score line in their next match at Miami in 2007. Vesnina managed to defeat her in three sets at the Ponte Vedra Beach event in 2009, although Peng ousted her in their next
two meetings at Charleston in 2010 and Doha in 2011. This is Vesnina’s first straight-sets win over Peng.
Elena Vesnina will now battle against top seed Caroline Wozniacki in the title match of the Family Circle Cup, which will take place on Sunday.
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