Galina Voskoboeva defeats Agnes Szavay to advance into the second round at Brussels Ladies Open
Kazakh qualifier Galina Voskoboeva earned a retirement victory against Hungarian Agnes Szavay to advance in the second round of the 2011 Open de Bruxelles on Tuesday.
A former top seventy, Voskoboeva is currently in awesome form as she showed her top notch skills at Casablanca ITF where won the title. She entered with same spirit in this Belgium’s red clay court tournament and triumphed over
Belgian wild card enterer Valerie Varhamme, fourth seeded British Anne Keothavong and fifth seeded American Irina Falconi in the qualifiers.
Currently ranked at 291 in the Sony Ericsson WTA Premier rankings, Kazakh kept her form in this first round match and was leading 5-2 when Szavay, ranked 41st, was forced to retire after thirty-three minutes due to an
injury.
She was facing 22-year-old Hungarian for the third time and after earning this retirement victory, Voskoboeva took the lead in their head-to-head series by 2-1.
26-year-old Kazakh entered Royal Primerose Tennis Club in full of confidence and smoothly held her opening serve. Later, she lost her serve once but broke the Hungarian’s serve twice to take the 5-2 lead. Voskoboeva clobbered more
double faults and a lower first serve share but she registered an impressive 67 percent win on it. She saved two out of three breakpoints faced and converted two out of three breakpoint opportunities to her advantage.
A former top fifteen player, Szavay hasn’t had much activity this season so far and exited from the second round from all four tournaments she participated this season before entering in this WTA event. The Hungarian played convincingly
in her opening round match here and could have won it if she wasn’t injured.
Up next for the Kazakh is the second seeded Vera Zvonareva. The Russian Zvonareva received a bye into the second round as she is the second seed at this tournament.
Another qualifier would be joining Voskoboeva in the second round. Alison Van Uytvanck took one hour and forty-two minutes to down Swiss Patty Schnyder in a three set thriller.
The Belgian Uytvanck broke Swiss’ serve three times in the first set. She then failed to find any breakpoint opportunity in the second set to equalise the scores. 17-year-old then got back on track in the decider and converted
two out of four breakpoint opportunities to her advantage to seal the deal with a 6-3, 2-6, 6-2 score line.
The teenager will next face her sixth seeded countrywoman, Yanina Wickmayer who downed Estonian qualifier Kaia Kanepi in three sets to reach this spot.
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