Li Na ends her losing streak in the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix
Chinese Li Na ended her five-match rot since the Australian Open semi-finals on Monday as she downed Latvian Anastasija Sevastova 6-2, 6-3 to advance to the second round of the 2011 Porsche Tennis Grand Prix.
The sixth seeded Chinese displayed tremendous skills at the start of the season and won the title at Sydney after defeating 3rd seeded Belgian Kim Clijsters. She then extended her winning streak by 11-0 after defeating top seeded Dane Caroline Wozniacki in the semi-final of Melbourne Grand Slam.
She became the first Chinese to reach the final of a Grand Slam but lost to Clijsters in the final. After this defeat, she slumped to 0-5 exiting from the opening round at Dubai, Doha, Indian Wells and Miami.
Li re-ignited her old spark in this tournament and eased past the Latvian at Porsche Arena. She has now extended the lead in her head-to-head against Sevastova by 2-0.
Ranked 7th in the WTA Premier rankings, Chinese unleashed her flurry of ground strokes to reel off first three games in a row. Later she held her remaining serves plausibly and broke the Latvian’s serve again to clinch the opening set with a convincing 6-2 score line.
The 29-year-old kept her momentum rolling into the second set and held her opening serve. Although she was shaky at times and lost her serve twice, but she counterattacked and broke Sevastova’s serve three times to seal the set with an assuring 6-3 victory.
Overall, Li completely outclassed 38th ranked Sevastova in every scoreboard statistic as she clobbered less unforced errors and had a much better first serve share. The 29-year-old converted five out of six breakpoint opportunities to her advantage and saved eight out of ten breakpoints she faced.
"I'm excited. I've been waiting for this win for a long time," Li beamed. "I've been asking myself what I want to do and how I can get back on the winning track Coming into this clay court season I knew I had to stand up and take charge."
The 21-year-old Latvian, on the other side of net, displayed dismal performance in this WTA event. She made a quarter-final berth at Dubai and Monterrey and reached the fourth round at Australian Open but she capitalise only two of her ten breakpoint opportunities.
Next up for Li will be either German wild card Sabine Lisicki or Slovak Dominika Cibulkova who will play their opening round match on Tuesday afternoon.
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