Kim Clijsters on the roll; defeats Andrea Hlavackova in the second round brawl – Wimbledon 2012
Former world number one, Kim Clijsters, continued with her thumping run of form to book a place in the third round of the Wimbledon Championships on Wednesday afternoon. The 47th ranked elegant Belgian ousted the world
number 90, Andrea Hlavackova of Czech Republic, in the second round battle, settling the final score line in twin sets, 6-3, 6-3, to reach the round of 32 in London, England.
Clijsters’ Wimbledon campaign was in doubt after her injury-stricken retirement form the semi-final of the UNICEF Open last week but her performances in the opening two rounds have faded away all the concerns about her physical
fitness. The 29-year-old was agile like a teenager on the fast courts of the All England Tennis and Croquet Club and put up a brilliant show of grass-court tennis to earn a spot in the third round of the star-studded event in London, England.
It was the first ever encounter between these two contenders and the Belgian didn’t take much time to get under the skin of Hlavackova. Clijsters initiated the brawl with all her guns blazing right from the beginning and kept on
building pressure on the 25-year-old bleak opponent, eventually forcing her to surrender in the second set. She won 74 per cent points on her first serve and broke the Czech rival three out of seven times en route to victory. Hlavackova utterly failed to craft
even a single break opportunity in the entire matchup to finish on the losing side in the end.
"I was very happy with the way everything went today," Clijsters said after her 15th victory of the running season. "I felt it was another step upwards from my first match against Jankovic. I thought my opponent had
a really tough game to read. She was serving well too. It was only a couple games here and there that made the difference in the match. We had a long match before us, so I was really focused once I got out there and just really tried to be ready for the match
from the start."
Clijsters didn’t hesitate to raid the net frequently and won 12 out of 14 net points in the match. A total of 107 points were played in the matchup and the unseeded Belgian won 62 out of them, whilst Hlavackova kept lingering behind
with 45 points in her bag.
12th seeded Russian, Vera Zvonareva, will face Clijsters in the third round clash later this week.
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