Jill Craybas casts out Marie-eve Pelletier in the 1st round – Mercury Open 2011
Monday the 1st of August, saw the start of the first round of the Mercury Open 2011. The first two players to contest against each other were old time rivals Jill Craybas against Marie-eve Pelletier. However, The American
(Craybas) won the match 6-1, 6-1 in an exciting 1 hour, 19 minutes, and 54 seconds.
The two players had previously contested against each other four times in; 2000, twice in 2001 and 2005. The last time both the players had met was on a clay court at Charleston where Pelletier had won the match 5-7, 6-4, 6-2.
Pelletier was leading in their head to head 3-1 when the Higher Power bestowed another chance to Craybas to restore her dignity. Both the players battled it out on the hard courts at the La Costa Resort and Spa, Carlsbad, California.
Craybas’s served brilliantly as she hit one ace and won 67% of the first serves along with twice as many return points as Pelletier’s (Pelletier’s total return points of the set were 24%) in her total return points. The American’s
precession didn’t falter even once and she struck zero double faults. While, Pelletier had an average 44% of her total service points and was able to hit two aces.
Craybas’s defence did not topple; hence, she did not give her opponent a single break point and instead broke her opponent three times. Whereas, Pelletier was only able to save one break point out of the four, and she lost most
of her points because of a poor defence.
After taking a thrashing in the first set, one would have expected the 29-year-old (Pelletier) to save some dignity; however, that was not the case. Instead during the second set neither of the players threw an ace and nor did
they strike any double faults though they both had extreme precision.
The Canadian’s (Pelletier) total service points were an average 42%. Subsequently, her return game was relatively poorer than her serve with total return points amounting to 37% and thus attaining a total of 19 out of 49.
The 37-year-old (Craybas) was able to save a 100% of her break points along with capitalizing on another 100% of break points faced. Mean while her opponent (Pelletier) was not able to neither save nor win her break points. Craybas
won the set because of an above average serve and return serve and limited her opponent to only 1 game point.
Despite her age, Craybas was a better player than her opponent and with a strong defence and powerful serve she bagged a straight set victory with a 2-0 lead. She will now face Vera Zvonareva in the second round of the Mercury
Cup 2011.
Tags: