Jelena Jankovic advances to round three; Kai-Chen Chang departs – Australian Open 2012
Serb prolific tennis ace, Jelena Jankovic, won the second round battle against the Chinese, Kai-Chen Chang, in the Australian Open tournament. On Wednesday, both contenders contested for the first time in their professional career
and former world number one, Jankovic, triumphed in straight sets 6-4, 6-2. It was relatively a good battle put forth by the 21-years-old Chang but requires a lot of grooming to play against one of the world’s best tennis players.
World number 13, Jankovic, started the first set proceedings with a successful serve break but her opponent bounced back with a reverse break in the next game to level the scores at 1-1. Both players held their respective serves
in the next three games before the inferior ranked stunned everyone with a breakthrough to take lead. She looked promising but former world number one was more experienced with this phenomena as she stayed composed and broke serve back to level the scores.
Jankovic showed her class and broke serve in the ninth game and successful served for the set to register a set lead. Trailing one set down, Chang looked a bit fatigued but started the second set with a successful serve game. Jankovic
held her serve and earned a vital breakpoint in the next game to take 2-1 lead. She repeated the similar feat in the next two games to increase her lead to 4-1.
It was getting ominous for the inferior ranked Chinese as her shots were mostly landing outside the prescribed boundaries of the court. She was losing control on her serves; was running out of stamina with the crowd cheering her
opponent’s name all the way. Her defeat was pretty obvious with so many factors running against her favour.
Chang desperately needed to break serve to prolong the set but her efforts went in vain. She was completely worn out by the end of the seventh game. Former world number one served for the match and successfully accomplished her
goal of moving into the third round of the contest. It will be interesting to see how far she can advance in the Australian Open; she is set to make a return to the Top-10 performers of the world.
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