Kaia Kanepi defeats Gisela Dulko to advance at the BNP Paribas Open
14th seeded Estonian Kaia Kanepi bounced back against Argentinean Gisela Dulko to win a three set thriller in the second round of the 2011 BNP Paribas Open on Friday night. She registered a 3-6, 6-2, 6-2 win over the
Argentine.
World number 47, Dulko has enjoyed top form recently winning 8 of her last 10 matches. She recently won Acapulco WTA title by overwhelming 6th seeded Spaniard Arantxa Parra Santonja in straight sets in the final. She
then reached the semi-finals at Monterrey before losing to 2nd seeded Russian wild card Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova. In this tournament, she made a comeback win against the American wild card Vania King in the first round. But in this second round,
she lost her concentration and was dumped out from the tournament.
Dulko secured a quick win in the first serve. She held her opening serve in the second game convincingly and broke the Estonian’s serve in the fifth game to take the lead. She then converted two more opportunities to her advantage
to clinch the first set 6-3. Despite double faulting twice and having a really low first serve percentage of 39 per cent as opposed to Kanepi’s 78 per cent, she registered an impressive 78 per cent win on it.
Dulko carried her winning ways in the second set and won the first two games, breaking Kanepi’s serve in the second game. She had a higher first serve percentage in this set and committed no double faults. Kanepi, who recently
reached the semi-finals at Paris before losing to top seeded Belgian Kim Clijsters, re-formed herself. The world number 16, Kanepi broke back in the third game and then went on to win five consecutive games to clinch a 6-2 win. Though she double faulted twice,
she earned a convincing 60 percent win on her first serve and fired 3 powerful aces.
Dulko held her serve in the very first game in the final set. But the Estonian charged up and won the next five games in a row. She was clearly better in the decider and won with a score line of 6-2. She broke Dulko’s serve twice,
hammered three aces and registered an amazing 75 percent win on her first serve.
She will next face 23rd seeded Belgian Yanina Wickmayer. She reached this spot after dumping American Melanie Oudin in straight sets.
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