Nadia Petrova defeats Dinah Pfizenmaier to clear the opening round – Porsche Tennis Grand Prix 2013
Russian tennis ace, Nadia Petrova, had an excellent beginning to her Porsche Tennis Grand Prix campaign by registering a convincing victory in the opening round. The 30-year-old outplayed the local qualifier, Dinah Pfizenmaier,
in straight sets, 7-6(2), 6-4, to reach the pre-quarter-final round of the WTA event in Stuttgart, Germany. She took one hour and 43 minutes to wrap up the match on Tuesday.
Rated at number 11 in the WTA Premier Rankings, Petrova was facing Pfizenmaier for the first time in her professional career. She took her time to get the knowhow of her opponent’s game play and then manoeuvred her way past the
21-year-old German in straight sets. Petrova was stretched to a tie-breaker round in the opening set of the match but she used her experience to tackle the intense pressure situation. She overcame the limited resistance from the German qualifier in the second
set and comprehensively sealed her eighth victory of the 2013 WTA season in style. Petrova was delighted on her early triumph in the tournament and hopes to carry on her winning impetus in the matches to come this week.
"She served amazing today," Petrova said. "It was really difficult for me to break, and that's why she took me to the tie-breaker in the first set. But I stayed calm and collected and I was able to win the set. Then I said, 'Okay,
this is the time, step it up.' I was able to break her again to win the match. She made me work really hard. She's a great player. We're going to see a lot of her in the future."
Petrova delivered 68 per cent of her first serve on target and secured 34 out of 44 points on it. She restrained unforced errors to the minimum and didn’t commit a single double fault in the entire matchup. The Russian crafted
a total of seven break opportunities in the contest but only two conversions proved sufficient to drive Pfizenmaier out of the tournament.
The eighth seeded Russian face the former world number one, Ana Ivanovic, in the second round of Porsche Tennis Grand Prix.
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