Lesia Tsurenko scuttles past Alla Kudryavtseva to reach the first round – BNP Paribas Open 2012
World number 115, Lesia Tsurenko, trashed the superior ranked Alla Kudryavtseva, to reach the main round of the BNP Paribas Open on Tuesday. She defeated her in straight sets 6-3, 6-1 taking just 78 minutes to complete an upset.
The winner started the match with a successful serve hold and continued to dominate the proceedings. She kept her opponent under the cosh; forcing her to play from the baseline. She tried a serve and volley technique and that worked
in her favour with her opponent unable to find an opening in this technique to dismantle the game style of the Ukrainian.
It was just a matter of time for the Ukrainian before she broke her opponent’s serve and coupled it with a thumping serve hold to take a lead of 5-2 in the opening set. It was getting pretty ominous for the Russian who was looking
down and out. She was trying different things but nothing was going in her favour. A couple of drop shots went wrong and the sliced returns were finding the net on most of the occasions.
The first set ended with the Ukrainian winning 37 points compared to just 31 of her opponent. She saved a single breakpoint and created five opportunities to break her opponent’s serve but only capitalized on one of them. Her first
serve conversion rate was also terrific with 78 per cent rallies ending in her favour. Overall, she was the dominating player in the opening set.
Nothing changed for the Russian in the second set except the things got worst. She dropped a couple of serve games at the start and went down 0-4. She fought well to win a break back but just to see her serve broken in the following
game. Another breakpoint for the Ukrainian pulled curtains for the Russian who never looked to have found her form at all.
Tsurenko won 30 points in the second set whilst her opponent could only secure16 rallies coupled with an ace in the final game. The first serve conversion rate was extremely dismal for both players, however, the Ukrainian covered
it up with 86 per cent conversion rate in the second serve whereas her opponent could only grasp three points from 11 second serves.
Tsurenko finds herself up against the Israeli tennis ace, Shahar Peer, who is going to give her a very tough time especially considering her supreme run of form in the recent times.
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