Na Li makes a meal of Alla Kudryavtseva in the opening round – Wimbledon Championships 2011
Third seeded Chinese Na Li secured a 6-3, 6-3 victory over Russian Alla Kudryavtseva to move into the second round of the 2011 Wimbledon Championships in Wimbledon, London on Tuesday.
Li began the match in a very confident fashion, finishing off a drawn-out rally to break serve in the opening game, only to hand the advantage with a help of an easy volley in the second game of the opening set.
Although drop shot was a stratagem for Li from the early stages, with varying degrees of aggression, it was the more reliable and fastidious backhand down the line that earned a second break at 4-3 after a sloppy game from Kudryavtseva.
Li moved hurriedly towards the brink of the opening set, only for Kudryavtseva to show some resistance as Li was about to hurl the Russian out of the tournament. However, the Russian No. 70 came back to the court with some new plans, but unfortunately to no avail as a number of unforced errors from the Russian’s racquet immediately handed Li the set.
Clearly struggling to lift the level of her game, Kudryavtseva decided the only plan left open her was all-out attack, and it worked long enough to obtain her a break at the beginning of the second set. The 2011 French open winner soon got a sniff to her opponent’s new game plan and started to deploy the drop shots with reckless repetition, much to the displeasure of Kudryavtseva.
However, for a player seeking her second Grand Slam of the season since the French Open, two weeks ago, it was the right move as she swept through the next three games with utmost ease. Kudryavtseva gave the fans one last moment to cheer when she broke serve with Li trying to close out the match, but the Chinese No.1 made no mistake this time around and sealed the victory after an hour and seven minutes.
Asked afterwards to which extent she had been troubled by the Russian in the match, Li responded: "At the beginning of the match she had a huge, big serve, and she was also playing more flat, which is tough on grass, I never knew what shot was going to come or was going to happen next and I had to run a lot. But I was able to stay focused until the end of the match."
By virtue of this victory, Li has improved her year-to-date win/loss mark to 28/9 matches and now marches on into the second round of the tournament where she will meet either Latvia’s Anastasija Sevastova or compatriot Zheng Jie.
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