Liu/ Sun flog Lertcheewakarn/ Mladenovic in 1st round – HP Japan Open 2011
Chinese duo of Wan-Ting Liu with Sheng-Nan Sun flogged Thai Noppawan Lertcheewakarn with French Kristina Mladenovic in the opening round of the HP Japan Open 2011. The teams battled it out on the hard courts of Utsubo Tennis Center
in Osaka, Japan. After just one hour and ten minutes the Chinese couple overshadowed the Thai/ French duo by bouncing back from a set down 2-6, 6-3, 10-2 on Wednesday the 12th of October 2011.
Inaugurating the initial round of the match was Liu/ Sun, who were unable to bag the first game and got off to an appalling start. Mean while, Lertcheewakarn/ Mladenovic not only capitalized on an early break but as they held serve
for their first service game the scoreboard had rotated to 2-0. They then repeated the feat and further increased their lead to a 4-0. In the fifth game they again broke their adversaries for the third time and took a 5-0 lead.
It was in the sixth game that Sun/ Liu managed to make a return by breaking back immediately and bagged a game. For the following two games the teams won a game each on alternate games and in doing so; the Thai/ French duo conquered
the opening set with a 6-2 victory.
After taking a lashing in the opening set, Liu/ Sun pulled up their socks and initiated the second round of the match with a hold of serve. Following in their footsteps were Lertcheewakarn/ Mladenovic, who too held serve and placed
themselves right beside their opponents at 1-1 on the scoreboard.
In the third game the Chinese pair held serve and then capitalized from a breakpoint in the fourth game which enabled them to take the lead at 3-1 by the end of the fourth game. They again repeated the feat and by the end of the
sixth game they were not only leading but were only a game away from victory.
However, Lertcheewakarn/ Mladenovic were not ready to throw in the towel and quickly broke back in the seventh game to stay in the match. Although, they reduced the deficit to 3-5, they were unable to muster any more games and
thus lost the set. While, Sun/ Liu held serve in the eighth game by smashing three consecutive aces and bagged an unopposed game to conquer the second set.
At the end of the first two sets, both the squads had bagged a set apiece and kicking off the super tiebreaker was Lertcheewakarn/ Mladenovic and again they were unable to hold their serve. Nevertheless, Sun/ Liu were steam rolling
past their opponents as they had utilised the serve-break-serve technique to reel off straight four points and were placed at 4-0 on the scoreboard.
In t he following four points the players managed to bag a point each and the scoreboard had shifted to 6-2 with Sun/ Liu leading the tiebreaker. As the Chinese couple broke their rivals twice, they clichéd a 10-2 score in the
tiebreaker and sealed their victory.
The Chinese pair managed to reserve a spot in the quarterfinal of the event where they will be facing Kimiko Date-Krumm with Shuai Zhang.
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