Mirjana Lucic-Baroni stuns Stefanie Voegele to reach the main draw – BNP Paribas Open 2013
In the qualifying competition of BNP Paribas Open, number 17 seed Mirjana Lucic-Baroni stunned the top seeded Swiss contender, Stefanie Voegele, in a cracking three-setter to reach the main draw. The Tuesday’s contest between these two players lasted for almost two hours, with Lucic-Baroni settling the final scores at 6-7(2), 6-3, 6-3, in her favour.
It was the second encounter between these two contestants and the Croatian underdog avenged her last year’s loss from Voegele. The top seeded Swiss overwhelmed Lucic-Baroni at Osprey, USA, last season but couldn’t pose the similar sort of performance on the hard courts of Indian Wells on Tuesday. She was in the driving seat after winning the opening set but then suddenly went through a terrible slump of form in the following two sets. Her opponent capitalised on her deteriorating form and quickly bagged the last two sets with identical scores to register her victory in style.
The opening set of the match witnessed an early exchange of serve breaks from both sides, followed by a conventional serve game. The scores crept to 6-6 and a tie-break came into play. Voegele took the better of her Croat opponent and spared merely two points for her to clinch the set at 7-6(2).
Lucic-Baroni held her opening three serves in the next set before launching her onslaught upon the top seeded contender. She broke Voegele’s serve in the seventh and ninth games to reach 6-3 in no time.
Once getting into her winning groove, Lucic-Baroni carried on her impetus in the decider as well. She came out firing at Voegele and went for a five-game rampage, breaking her opponent twice and imposing a formidable 5-0 lead over her. Voegele made her last attempt to make her way back in the game and broke the Croatian serve in the seventh game to reduce the deficit to 2-5. However, she couldn’t repair the early damage caused by Lucic-Baroni and eventually had to submit the final set at 3-6 to fall out of the tournament in dismay.
Lucic-Baroni will play her first match of the main draw against the unseeded French, Pauline Parmentier, later this week.
Tags: