Maria Kirilenko tops Tsvetana Pironkova in the Round Robin clash – Tournament of Champions 2012
World number 15, Maria Kirilenko, stamped her authority at the Qatar Airways Tournament of Champions with a dashing win over the Bulgarian number one, Tsvetana Pironkova, on Wednesday. She showed some thrilling stroke play to outmuscle
the 44th ranked local in straight sets, posting final scores of 6-1, 6-4 in an hour and 23 minutes.
In an on court interview at the end of the contest, Kirilenko said, “I had never played against Tsvetana before. I saw a couple of games when she played yesterday, but it's always different just seeing the player and actually playing
them. I decided to just see how it went the first couple of games, and then figure out what to do from there. I did everything right in the first set, I think. Everything was tighter in the second set, but that's normal, and I'm happy I could finish it in
straight sets.”
Pironkova was enthusiastic at the start of the contest; broke serve up front to take a lead but couldn’t continue to play with the same momentum. The 25-year-old Russian hammered her opponent in the following six games; winning
three breakthroughs and posting a hat-trick of serve holds to round off the opening set proceedings.
The crowd was left dejected by the half-hearted effort of their heroine. She was suppose to show some guts and stand up against the superior ranked player just like she did against Jie Zheng a day earlier. Kirilenko was aware of
her opponent’s capabilities so didn’t take a chance at all and stayed focused throughout the encounter.
The 25-year-old Pironkova commenced the second set in a dramatic fashion. She held her serve and squeezed a breakthrough in the following game to make it 2-0 in her favour. Spectators in the arena were once again brought to life
and the chants of ‘Come on Piron’ started to circulate around the stadium. However, it was not long before the Russian handled the situation and came back to level the scores at 2-2.
Moreover, the 15th ranked Russian broke serve again in the fifth game to make it 3-2 in her favour; protected it with a serve hold and didn’t falter in the rest of the games. She served out the set in the 10th
game without losing a single point and marched on with a win to her name.
Maria Kirilenko will play her long-time doubles partner Nadia Petrova in the second Round Rubber match on Thursday.
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