Kateryna Bondarenko defeats Alize Cornet in the opening round – Wimbledon Championships 2011
World number 126, Kateryna Bondarenko produced arguably the best performance of the year, as she dominated the French, Alize Cornet from start to finish, winning the match in straight sets.
The Ukrainian sent the Frenchwoman packing with a 7-5, 6-2 score, taking a little over an hour and sixteen minutes and reached the second round of season’s third Grand Slam tournament.
The 24-year-old Ukrainian was in electric form, swatting away Cornet’s serves for grabbing winners on several occasions, and drawing the clunky Ukrainian into the net, only to arrow winners for fun. However, what was most inspiring
about Bondarenko’s win was her untiring consistency. The Ukrainian No.2 also served up a multitude of winners, and appeared extremely relaxed in each part of her game, a trait that can create a lot of problems for her up-coming opponents.
Bondarenko was 5-4 in a blink of an eye and looked well competent and proficient to break the supposedly fearsome Cornet’s serve at will. The 2008 Budapest Grand Prix winner looked out of ideas on how to twine winning points together
as her inefficient shots were hugely being punished by the reckless Ukrainian. After a few more hermetic service games from the Ukrainian, it was one set to love.
The second set chased the verily similar pattern, with Bondarenko chipping away an early break on, and her insolence and caliber seemed to grow, as her higher ranked opponent resigned to defeat. Cornet seemed unable to reach the
same enthralling heights in the second set and started to make a number of unforced errors in an attempt to find the same depth and width she had in the opener. Meanwhile, Bondarenko stepped up her own level and capitalised, breaking in the eighth game before
a wide forehand from Cornet, allowed the Ukrainian to seal the match in an hour and sixteen minutes.
This was a sublime performance from Bondarenko and especially against someone who was a better player on grass and had been playing well than the Ukrainian. She wrapped up her straight sets victory by scoring 69 percent of points
on her service, 56 percent of points on second serve and a total of 28 of 62 points on return.
Emerging victorious, Bondarenko now moves on ahead to face Sara Errani of Italy in the second round of Wimbledon Championships. However, it looks as if the luck would not be smiling on the Ukrainian anymore, as she is be going
to meet the world number 34 for the fourth time in her career.
Errani leads their head-to-head series to 2-1, and their fourth meeting would definitely result in a comfortable win for the Italian as Bondarenko has neither the fire power nor the match experience required to do any damage to
Errani on Centre Court at Wimbledon.
Tags: