Jana Cepelova stuns Madalina Gojnea to reach the main draws – Tashkent Open 2011
Surprise for the top seeded Romanian, Madalina Gojnea, as she crashed out of the final round qualifiers of the Tashkent Open, at the hands of the unseeded Slovakian, Jana Cepelova, on Monday afternoon.
The contest was played on the hard courts of the Tashkent Tennis Center, in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, with the top seeded qualifier suffering a heavy defeat at the hands of Cepelova to let her into the main round draws. The Slovak wrapped up victory at 3-6, 6-3, 6-3, taking two hours and four minutes of play to get to the main rounds of the WTA (Women’s Tennis Association) event.
The top seeded Romanian was off to a brilliant start in the match, bagging the opener early to lead the 1-0 but lost her steam in the later sets to let Cepelova force her way back in the game. Gojnea appeared completely out of form in the last two sets of the match and failed to put up a decent resistance to the unseeded opponent’s fury.
The contest was stuffed with a number of serve breaks from both players, as Gojnea struck five out of her 14 opportunities, while Cepelova beat her with her seven cracking break point conversions from her nine chances in the match. The Slovak also coughed eight double faults in the game but very skilfully compensated for it by clinching 41 out of 61 first serve points to come out as the winner in the end.
Cepelova was off to a sloppy start in the opener, dropping her serve in the second game to trail 0-3 early in the contest. Gojnea too k advantage of her early break to wrap up the first set at 6-3 to get one up in the competition.
Tide turned in the following set as the competition got extremely intense, with four successive serve breaks seen in the opening four games of the set. Cepelova went on to nail her third serve break of the day in the eighth game to take the set 6-3, levelling the matchup at 1-1 to enforce a third decisive one.
The final set again witnessed a trade of five straight serve breaks from both contestants, to take the scores to 2-4, with Cepelova leading the game. The Slovak contestant stung a decisive serve break in the ninth game of the set to conclude victory at 6-3, getting through to the main rounds of the Tashkent Open.
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