Maria Jose Sanchez, Agnieszka Radwanska sail into the second round – AEGON International 2011
World number 72, Maria Jose Martinez Sanchez of Spain booked her place in the second round of AEGON International after a convincing straight sets victory over a disappointed Shahar Peer who went off the balance as soon she lost
her first set. Peer, who is ranked 22nd in WTA (Women Tennis Association) singles rankings list, could not catch up with her opponent’s pace and lost the match 5-7, 3- 6.
Opening the first set with an ace, Martinez Sanchez raced through the opening service game before immediately breaking Peer’s serve and advancing to a 5-0 lead. The Israeli woman defended her two break points before finally getting
on the scoreboard. So far, so good, and a routine victory for the Spaniard looked odds on. Peer however, was not going down without a fight and started to punish the Spaniard with some of her vicious ground strokes to level the score 5-5. Unfortunately, Peer
started to show signs of physical discomfort and submitted the first set to her Spaniard opponent with a 7-5 score line.
The Spaniard played exceptionally well and finally got the job done, proving herself marginally the better player statistically. The Spaniard fired a single ace and 51 percent of first serve in the first set, earning 62 percent
of points on her first serve and 60 percent of points on her second serve respectively. In contrast Peer’s performance was not up to the notch as she missed two break points on her way to a 5-7 loss in the first set.
After fighting the first set after a hard fought battle, it was perhaps inevitable that Peer would feel deflated. Martinez Sanchez began to find her A-game right at the beginning of the second set, and raced through the second
set and Peer was left helpless as Martinez Sanchez closed out with a hard fought, victory.
The Spaniard wrapped up her straight sets effort with two aces while committing a single double-fault. Moreover, she clinched 60 percent of points on her service, 43 percent of points on her return and a total of 73 of 139 points
to race away to big leads.
With this win, the Spaniard has extended her year-to-date win/loss mark to 10-10 matches and now marches on into the second round of the tournament where she will have to wait to know her next round opponent until the clash between
Czech’s Lucie Safarova and France’s Marion Bartoli is settled.
Among all the lucky winners on Monday, Agnieszka Radwanska of Poland also cemented her straight sets victory against the World number twenty eight, Jarmila Gajdosova of Australia, taking just 89 minutes of play.
Although Gajdosova caused a diminutive recession in Radwanska’s opening games, she remained unable to cause any further damage and lost the match in straight sets.
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