Mathilde Johansson upsets Monica Niculescu in the opening round - Guangzhou Int’l Women's Open 2012
World number 88, Mathilde Johansson, registered the first major upset of the tournament when she hammered away the 46th ranked Romanian star, Monica Niculescu, in straight sets 7-5, 6-2 to clear the opening round of the GRC Bank Guangzhou International
Women's Open on the morning of Tuesday.
It was the third face-off between the two athletes in their professional careers and ironically the first two battles were also won by the 27-year-old Frenchwoman. So, the sixth seed Romanian had a chance to take the revenge of the earlier losses but fall
victim to the second straight opening round upset in a couple of weeks.
The 24-year-old Romanian started the match with a bang; winning the opening return game and holding on to her serve in the following game to make it 2-0 upfront. She continued to impress with her game style and made it 3-0 with the help of the second breakpoint
on the trot. It looked like the Frenchwoman will just fall apart in few minutes into the match.
However, a terrific comeback from Johansson witnessed back-to-back breakpoints for her coupled with a good serve hold that levelled the scores at 3-3. Suddenly, the momentum swirled in favour of the 27-year-old French who started hitting the ball from the
sweet part of the racquet and demolished her opponent on her serves.
Niculescu did well to hold on to her serves until the scores moved on to 5-6. A tie-breaker round was the probable option to separate the two players in the opening set but instead the Romanian gifted a breakpoint in the 12th game of the match
that rounded off the opening set proceedings in favour of her rival. It was such an unfortunate event for the Romanian who deserved a tie-breaker round play.
Johansson didn’t look back from that stage and won a couple of breakthroughs on the trot in the second half of the match to make 4-0 at the start. She lost a breakpoint in the following game that lowered the trail to 1-4. However, the breakthrough in the
eighth game for the French earned him a shot at the quarter-final berth. She will be up against either Saisai Zheng or Julia Cohen in round two.
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