Greta Arn, Jarmila Gajdosova advance at the Internazionali BNL D’Italia
Hungarian tennis player Great Arn showed remarkable fighting ability and temperament as she came back from a set deficit to claim a spot in the second round of 2011 Internazionali BNL D’Italia tournament in Rome. Arn stunned 11th seed Svetlana Kuznetsova in her opening match on Monday with a 3-6, 7-6 (4), 7-6(9) victory in a match that lasted for more than 3 hours and 22 minutes.
Kuznetsova dominated the opener with some high quality tennis. She broke the Russian’s serve twice and earned a crucial 4-2 lead in the set after converting a 22 point rally in her favour. Ranked 13th in the world, Kuznetsova held on to her next serve games to clinch the opening set.
Arn bounced back brilliantly in the following set. After both players traded breaks of serve, the set was forced into a tie-breaker. Arn showed no signs of nerves as she clinched four straight points in the tie-breaker to level the set score 1-1.
In the final set, the contestants raised their spirits and came up with special performances. Arn broke the serve first in third game of the set after she successfully converted the very first break point. Leading the game score by 4-2, the Hungarian looked on course to an emphatic victory but Kuznetsova had other ideas as she broke back in eight game to take the set into another tie-breaker. Both players put up a magnificent show in the tie-breaker however it was the 32-year-old Arn who claimed crucial points on her opponent’s serve to seal the match.
Arn has done exceptionally well on the Women’s Tennis Association tour since the start of this season. She lifted second WTA title of her career at Auckland in her first tournament of the year. Since then she has given considerable results including her quarterfinal appearance at Acapuclo and Monterrey Open. The Hungarian will be eyeing another strong performance here at Rome.
In another match, Australian Jarmila Gajdosova thrashed out Corinna Dentoni of Italia 6-1, 6-2 to advance into the second round of prestigious WTA tournament.
Gajdosova made an aggressive start to the match and soon found herself leading the game score by 4-1. She broke her opponent’s serve three times in the opening set and required less than half an hour to take the 1-0 lead in the set score.
The Australian tennis-pro continued to pressurise her opponent with some top quality tennis in the following set as well and made two more serve breaks to seal the match in straight sets.
Gajdosova completely dominated the challenger in a completely one sided match lasting for just over an hour. Her superior serve proved to be the main difference between the contestants as she secured 7 serve aces points. Her next round opponent will be American Bethanie Mattek-Sands.
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