Li Na beats Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova in the second round – Toray Pan Pacific Open 2012
World number eight, Li Na, slammed away the 25th ranked Russian, Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, to book a third round spot in the Toray Pan pacific Open on Tuesday. She registered a tight three sets win with the score line
of 7-5, 4-6, 6-2. It wasn’t a comfortable start for the 30-year-old Chinese but she managed to come out as a winner that is the most important thing for her at the moment. A gruelling battle of almost two hours and 37 minutes witnessed some classic shot making
at both ends with Li having the final say in the clash.
The 21-year-old Russian defeated the Chinese professional in the second round of the Wimbledon Championship in 2008. However, the revenge mission from the seventh seed Li was accomplished last year in the quarter-final of the New
Haven Open at Yale. This was the second straight victory for the Chinese number one who was handed a very tough second round draw compared to other athletes of the top eight seeded category.
The opening set witnessed a traditional game play from both players. No breakthroughs until the end of the 11th game were seen at either end. However, the Russian flopped in enforcing the tie-breaker round and gifted
a breakpoint that led to her downfall. Pavlyuchenkova had no opportunity to break serve throughout the encounter but had to save five breakpoints to reach this far in the set. She wasn’t able to hold her opponent on the sixth occurrence and handed over the
win after performing all the hard work.
Li dropped a breakpoint in the first game of the second set and a swap of breakpoints didn’t hurt the cause of the Russian at all. She cruised away to a set triumph and enforced the deciding battle into play. The main problem was
that she had to dig deep to hold serve in almost all games of the second set; on the other hand, Li just faltered twice but regrouped and lost just one point on her serve in the remaining portion of the set.
The serving issue caused the major difference in the final set. Li won two breakpoints to wrap up the proceedings. She will be facing either Caroline Wozniacki or Daniela Hantuchova in round three.
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