Kai-Chen Chang takes down Caroline Garcia in second round – OEC Taipei WTA Ladies Open 2012
World number 100, Kai-Chen Chang of Chinese Taipei overcame the early resistance of the French teenager, Caroline Garcia, in the second round clash of OEC Taipei WTA Ladies Open tournament on Thursday. She has to battle for one
hour and 32 minutes before settling the final score line at 7-6(5), 6-3 in her favour.
Both youngsters displayed some real fighting spirit in the opening set, stretching each others to their limits. The 21-year-old Taiwanese took the better of her opponent in the dying moments of the first set and carried on her
winning impetus in the following set conclude her victory. Garcia was all over the place in the second set and couldn’t post a decent performance with her racket, submitting the match to her superior-ranked opponent in the end.
It was the first encounter between these two contenders and Chang took limited time to get the knowhow of the French opponent’s game. She broke Garcia’s serve in the third game and held her own serve to formulate a 3-1 lead. The
19-year-old French kept labouring for a solid reply and finally hit back at the fifth seeded Taiwanese in the 10th game to level the score line to 5-5. Further successive holds of serve from both sides took the set into a tie-break, with both players
struggling to take the better of one another. Scores got tied once again at 4-4 in the decider but a crucial mini-break from Chang put her in the lead. She eventually concluded the set number one at 7-6(5) to get one up in the contest.
Once getting the upper hand in the matchup, Chang came out firing at her opponent in the following set and nailed her serve in the fourth game, further consolidating her lead to 4-1 after a successful serve hold. Garcia couldn’t
recover from that slump and the fifth seeded local contestant served out of the match comprehensively at 5-3.
Garcia’s error-ridden game play proved lethal for her in the match, as she coughed a total of seven double faults and frittered away three priceless break opportunities. Chang bagged 30 out of 44 first serve points in the match
and converted two out of four break points to come out as the deserving winner. Her victory granted her a berth in the quarter-final of the tournament and she will face the second seeded Belarusian, Olga Govortsova, for a place in the round of four on Friday.
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