Flavia Pennetta defeats Anastassia Grymalska in the opener – XXIV SNAI Open 2011
In modern tennis terms the 29-year-old Flavia Pennetta may be approaching a veteran status but there is no sign that she has any intension of slowing down.
At 29 years and six months of age, she in one of the oldest woman in the women’s draw here at the Palermo, Italy and will become the first Italian player to win the tournament for the second time if she successfully defends her
crown, having won in 2009.
The latest player to learn that Pennetta has no plans to reach for her slippers quite yet was her compatriot Anastassia Grymalska, who is just 21-years-old.
Grymalska gave a good deal of resistance to her much higher ranked opponent, losing the opener with just four games to six, but from the moment she dropped serve in the second set, a repeat never looked on the cards.
Pennetta needed only one hour and seven minutes to beat the Italian with a 6-4, 6-1 score line, which helped her go one up in their head-to-head series against Grymalska here at Palermo, Italy.
Putting 54 percent of first serves in the court, Pennetta gave Grymalska only one sniff of a break, en route to the second set. The 2009 Palermo champion then promptly won last two games in a row to take the opener and Grymalska
never threatened again. Pennetta had two break points of her own and she did not take any of them on her way to the second set.
Grymalska’s level of tennis started to drop after the Italian woman squandered her chances in the opener while Pennetta was frothing in confidence and with some dazzling returns; she managed to convert three break points to capture
the second set with a breadstick win.
With this win, the 29-year-old Pennetta has improved her year-to-date win/loss mark to 20/12 matches and now reaches the second round of the tournament for the seventh time in her career.
The Italian No.2 has an impressive history, having a 20/7 stellar record here at the tournament so far and had been a three-time runner-up, including a title here at 2009.
She now moves on into the second round of the tournament and waits to prey on her next victim when the clash between the Frenchwoman Aravane Rezai and her compatriot Mathilde Johansson is settled.
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