Na Li battles past Silvia Soler-Espinosa to move into third round – French Open 2011
World number 158, Silvia Soler-Espinosa of Spain, saw her Roland Garros dream come to an end when she lost her second round match to China’s tennis ace Na Li at the Stade Roland Garros on Thursday.
World number seven Li captured another biggest win of her career when she beat the Spaniard tennis star in straight sets 6-4, 7-5 to reach the third round of the Grand Slam. Li served and returned to perfection and managed to enter
the third round of the Roland Garros for the fifth time in her career.
Her opponent opened the match on a very bad note and lost her serve four times to hand over the first set to Li 6-4. But the second set brought a lot of hopes for her as she soon found herself leading at 5-2. It was then that Soler-Espinosa
suffered a lapse in concentration after which she lost five straight games and with them the second set at 5-7.
Li seemed like a good bet before the match and during the match, she delivered her trademark fiery fast serves and power hits to clinch the first set with a 6-4 score line. She was rewarded with two break points, and the out-of-sorts
Soler-Espinosa defended it weakly and allowed her opponent to go 0-4. Soler-Espinosa, who was aiming to reach the third round of the French Open for the first time in her career, hit back from 0-2 down to level at 4-4. But Li went up when Soler-Espinosa put
a weak forehand into the net and closed the first set in style.
However, the Spaniard would not be silenced so easily, she roared back immediately in the second set and delivered her own version of powerful backhands and forehands, executing some fantastic rallies, and managed to level the
set at 5-5. The second set appeared to be heading for a tie-break until a series of unforced errors from Soler-Espinosa allowed the Chinese tennis ace to win the next two games with a sweetly-struck backhand volley down the line.
Li, aiming to reach the third round of the tournament, again gave as good as she got in the first round match and converted four of ten break points and wrapped up the match with 34 winners against 25 unforced errors.
She next faces Romanian Sorana Cirstea, who beat compatriot Alexandra Dulgheru 6-2, 7-5. Li will be hoping for an improved showing against the Romanian player than the convincing one she gave against Soler-Espinosa, who exploited
some defects in the sixth seed’s game, especially the world number seven’s many unforced errors.
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