Maria Kirilenko scuttles past Tamarine Tanasugarn into the last four – Pattaya Open 2012
Russian tennis icon, Maria Kirilenko, countered resistance of the Thai participant, Tamarine Tanasugarn, in the quarter-final of the PTT Pattaya Open on Friday. She battled for an hour and 47 minutes before confirming her
triumph in straight sets 7-6(2), 6-1.
Three matches prior to this contest between the two contestants were shared in the ratio of 2:1 to Kirilenko. The fourth seed defeated Tanasugarn in WTA Indian Open 2004 and Wimbledon 2011. Tanasugarn was only lucky once
in Hyderabad way back in 2003 winning in straight sets 7-6(6), 6-3.
It was a stunning start for the fourth seed Russian who gobbled up the first three games of the set. Her strokes were finding the sweet spot of her racquet on all occurrences, making her opponent’s life extremely difficult
on the court. The Thai had local support in the arena that kept boosting her morale and she fought back; winning three games in a row including a vital breakthrough to level the scores at 3-3.
The Thai broke serve again in the seventh game that turned the tables on her opponent. Kirilenko was trailing a break down and suddenly found herself under pressure. The Russian battled back into the contest and won the serve
game registering her first successful game triumph after losing five games in a row.
Luckily for Kirilenko, Tanasugarn committed a couple of unforced errors in the following game. She capitalized on her opponent’s mistakes and earned a crucial breakpoint that levelled the scores at 5-5. Players held their
serves as the set was enforced into a tie-breaker round. With an early mini-break to her name, Kirilenko ousted her opponent to dodge a possible upset in the first set.
The second set was a display of pure class and domination from the Russian who went out with an all-round onslaught; winning first four games with couple of breakpoints under her belt. Sparing just one game for the local
participant, the fourth seed cruised into the semi-final stage to meet the likes of Romanian beauty queen, Sorana Cirstea.
Earlier in the day, the seventh seed Cirstea booked a berth in the last four with a lucky win over the injury-stricken top seed, Vera Zvonareva.
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