Nuria Llagostera Vives/ Arantxa Parra Santonja and Ana Ivanovic/ Andrea Petkovic cleared the opening round of the Sony Ericsson Open doubles
The Spanish duo of Nuria Llagostera Vives and Arantxa Parra Santonja took down the fourth seeded pair of Vania King of the United States and Yaroslava Shvedova of Kazakhstan in the first round of the doubles category of the Sony
Ericsson Open at Miami, Florida on Thursday night. The winning pair settled the scores at 3-6, 6-4, 10-7, in one hour and twenty nine minutes of play.
Vives and Santonja recovered very well from being one set down in the game to bag victory. They were outplayed by their opponents in the first set of the contest but reeled off the next two sets to advance to the second round of
the Sony Ericsson Open.
Both teams had eight chances each to break the opponents’ serve, with King and Shvedova converting five and the Spanish pair clinching four of them. King and Shvedova conceded plenty of unforced errors in the match, including five
expensive double faults which wore them out in the game. They served with 67 per cent accuracy, better than their opponents’ 56 per cent, but only collected 28 out of 61 total points in the game to remain on the losing end.
Vives and Santonja were outplayed by their rivals in the opener, dropping their serve three times and committing two double faults. King and Shvedova clinched the first set at 6-3, but the Spaniards bounced back in the next set
with three serve breaks to close the second set at 6-4. Vives and Santonja remained on top in the decider and concluded victory at 10-7 to move on to the second round of the tournament. They will face the pair of Maria Kondratieva of Russia and Renata Voracova
of Czech Republic in the next stage of the competition.
In the other doubles match of the evening, the wildcard pair of Ana Ivanovic of Serbia and Andrea Petkovic of Germany defeated the team of Chia-jung Chuang from Chinese Taipei and Anastasia Rodionova of Australia in the opening
round encounter. Ivanovic and Petkovic won the thrilling contest by 4-6, 7-5, 10-5, in one hour and thirty three minutes.
Ivanovic and Petkovic coughed seven double faults in the first set before submitting it to their opponents at 4-6. They pushed their way back in the next set by cracking four serve breaks to bag the second set at 7-5. Ivanovic
and Petkovic had less difficulty in cruising through the decider, finishing the contest at 10-5 and make it to the next round of the Sony Ericsson Open doubles.
Ivanovic and Petkovic will take on the winner of the match between the Czech duo of Iveta Benesova and Barbora Zahlavova-Strycova and the Polish team of Klaudia Jans and Alicja Rosolska, in the second round of the tournament.
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