Maria Kirilenko scuttles past Jie Zheng to round two – Mutua Madrid Open 2012
World number 19, Maria Kirilenko, reached the second round of the Mutua Madrid Open on Sunday at the expense of the 33rd ranked Chinese, Jie Zheng.
The 16th seed Russian was playing her eighth match against the 28-year-old Chinese and was trailing 2-5 in the head-to-head series of scores before the start of the match.
It was a good matchup on paper, Zheng had seen a slight slump in her play but the start to the season was terrific for the Chinese superstar so any result was possible.
A dismal start to the opening set lessened the morale of Zheng, as she lost the opening serve game and went down to a trail of 0-2. She saved two breakpoints in the fifth game but failed to repeat the heroics for the third time
in a row and drowned to a trail of 1-4.
Kirilenko was in sublime form; won all points on her serves and never looked to be in any sort of trouble at all. She bagged the following two serve games and registered a lead of one set.
No one predicted such a one-sided encounter before the start of the encounter. The Russian was already in pain having lost an opportunity to bag her first title, last week in Estoril Open. She was the second seed competitor there
but failed to reach the semi-final stage of the tournament.
Both players were eager to stay side by side in the second set and therefore traded breakpoints at the start to keep the scores together at 2-2. Once again, an exchange of breakthrough pushed the scores to 3-3 before the Russian
took lead in the seventh game by winning third successive breakpoint and consolidated it with a serve hold. Scores moved to 5-3.
Zheng held her serve and fought back into the contest by winning a timely breakpoint in the 10th game. However, she failed to hold her serve for the fourth time in the set and gifted the lead back to the 16th
seed Russian.
This time, Kirilenko was in no mood to waste such a crucial opportunity and smashed an ace that was coupled with three stunning winners down the line to round off the match in grand fashion.
Next up for the Russian beauty queen is her compatriot, Ekaterina Makarova, who successfully expelled the in-form Kazakh tennis star, Galina Voskoboeva, in the opening round on Monday.
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