Lara Arruabarrena-Vecino capsizes Jie Zheng to reach round two – China Open 2012
World number 88, Lara Arruabarrena-Vecino, stunned the local crowd by ousting the 22nd ranked Chinese star, Jie Zheng, in the opening round of the China Open on Monday. She sent her opponent packing in an hour and 43
minutes with straight sets score line of 6-2, 6-4.
Vecino was battling two rivals at the hard courts of Beijing, one being the spectators and second the 29-year-old Chinese star. However, she managed to enforce a pin drop silence early in the match by playing some terrific tennis.
She lost two breakpoints but won them back in the return games to keep the scores tightly packed together at 2-2.
The 20-year-old Spaniard was the first player to hold serve in the contest and continued to power down her opponent in the return games that gave her a lead of 4-2. She came all the way from the qualifiers and it was expected that
the local superstar will thrash her away in the opening round contest but it was not the case on Monday. She failed to break serve back; rather lost another breakpoint in the game that featured six deuces.
Zheng was trailing a set down and needed a good start to the second phase. She had a desired beginning; grab the breakthrough in the first game after a hard fought battle but couldn’t protect it with a serve hold. It was the fifth
straight occurrence when the 22nd ranked Chinese had failed to capitalize on her serve; definitely a terrible performance from the crowd favourite. The 20-year-old Spaniard held her serve to push the scores 2-1 in her favour. Both players swapped
breakpoints on consecutive occurrences that did titled the set in one way and then another but in the end stayed level for both players.
The Chinese held her serve for the first time in the match to equalize the scores at 4-4. Vecino didn’t lose focus and held her serve to regain the lead. The local was serving to stay in the match and failed to deliver at the right
time. Vecino squares off against the fifth seed German star, Angelique Kerber, in the next round.
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