Mathilde Johansson sails past Jill Craybas to clear round one – Swedish Open 2012
World number 83, Mathilde Johansson, bounced over the American lucky loser, Jill Craybas, in the opening round clash of the Sony Ericsson Open on the eve of Wednesday. It was straight sets victory, 6-4, 6-1, for the 27-year-old
French who ended her rival’s resistance in just 73 minutes.
Johansson started the match in a positive style; bagged the first serve after an initial scare and broke serve to love in the following game that allowed her some breathing space in the clash. She continued to dominate the proceedings
with another commanding serve hold and helped didn’t allow her competitor to win a single point in the fourth game as well.
After a thunderous start, the French starlet was brought down in the fifth game by the 144th ranked American veteran. 38-year-old Craybas managed to hold serve for the first time in the sixth game of the match. She decreased
the trail to 2-4 and broke serve for the second time in a row to further strengthen her chances of a comeback.
Craybas just lost one point in the eighth game of the match and levelled the scores at 4-4. However, Johansson managed to hold serve and win after a while. It was mandatory for the American lucky loser to hold serve in the following
game to stay in the set. However, she failed to do so and that ended the first half of the match in favour of the superior ranked French.
Craybas needed a strong start to the second set but instead she went down to a trail of 0-4 after losing a couple of serve games on the trot. Seeing her first set miraculous comeback, it was expected that she will bounce back and
register a similar performance but she drowned further to stupendous trail of 0-5.
Just one game in the end was allowed for the 38-year-old American veteran who was excited to have played the first round of the tournament despite failing to qualify through. However, she was chosen as the lucky loser in place
of the injured top seed Italian, Sara Errani, who withdrew from the tournament due to a shoulder problem.
Johansson will be playing the Israeli number one, Shahar Peer, in the following round of the tournament. She will be an underdog to start with but there is no doubt that she is capable of pulling up an upset against the Israeli
star.
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