Mathilde Johansson beats Shahar Peer and Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova in one day - Swedish Open 2012
World number 83, Mathilde Johansson, registered two back-to-back upsets in a single day to reach the semi-final stage of the Sony Swedish Open on Friday.
It was a pretty long day for the 27-year-old French who first outclassed the 49th ranked Israeli, Shahar Peer, in a taxing three-setter 6-2, 3-6, 6-2 that lasted an hour and 39 minutes.
The French came back to the clay courts of the Bastad, Sweden, to contest her quarter-final clash with the 28th ranked Russian, Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, who was seeded fifth in the tournament. Johansson wasted little
time dumping the 21-year-old competitor; registered straight set 6-4, 6-0 scores to book a spot in the last four.
Luckily for the experienced French starlet, the second contest was ended with in an hour that must have relieved some sort of tension off her shoulders. Contenders were forced to play two matches in one day just because there were
no matches being completed on the eve of Thursday due to heavy downpour which completely washed out the day’s play.
At the end of the second match, the 83rd ranked Frenchwoman was totally exhausted and confessed, "It was a really, really long day! Raining, then stopping, then playing and then raining - it was pretty tough. The morning
match was really tough but in the afternoon it was a bit easier as I think I was more used to the conditions than Anastasia so the bad weather kind of helped me out!"
In the first encounter, Peer was the favourite to win the encounter but she couldn’t start off well and lost the opening set courtesy successive breakthroughs for the French. She bounced back in the second set to keep her chances
alive for qualifying into the last eight. Both players swapped breakpoints on three occurrences before the Israeli star bagged two more breakpoints to hold serve and enforce the final set.
Despite dismal play in the second set, Johansson managed to answer the onslaught of her rival with some eye-startling strokes selection and bagged two breakpoints to book a berth in the quarter-finals.
In the following encounter, Johansson showed no respect at all for the fifth seed Russian and won the opening set with ease. She started the second set with some sort of trouble but managed to hold on to her serve. From there on,
the French starlet won five games on the trot to register a bagel and book a semi-final showdown with the local player, Johanna Larsson.
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