Petra Martic stuns Sorana Cirstea in round one – Generali Ladies Linz 2012
World number 64, Petra Martic, begin the series of upsets on the eve of Tuesday when she crushed the 26th ranked Romanian star, Sorana Cirstea, in the opening round of the Generali Ladies Linz. The 21-year-old Croatian
registered the triumph in straight sets with final scores of 6-4, 6-3.
A contest that lasted an hour and 21 minutes at the hard courts of Austria witnessed 143 points played altogether. Martic claimed 76 whilst her opponent bagged 67 off them. Both players had 10 opportunities to break serve. The
Croatian converted three off the allotted breakpoints and saved all of them to retain her lead. It was a remarkable performance from the youngster who smashed five aces to ice up the cake.
The opening set witnessed a successful breakthrough for the Croatian in the third game of the match. She led the scores 3-1 courtesy a tight serve hold. She was tested again in the sixth game that featured nine deuces in all; lasted
more than 15 minutes but didn’t help the cause of the 22-year-old Romanian who was in search of a breakthrough. Both players capitalized on their serves in the rest of the match that helped Martic to retain the lead and end the opening phase in her favour.
Cirstea was under the cosh in the second phase’s first game as well. However, she fought back and didn’t allow her rival any early breakthrough. On the other hand, the Romanian was extremely close in breaking her opponent’s serve
in the following game but couldn’t execute a simple winner down the line and hit in just long that saved the day for Martic.
The Croatian broke serve in the third game of the set and retained the lead until the end; survived scares in the sixth game on three occurrences before squeezing a serve hold. It was a terrible performance from the Romanian who
was a bit unlucky on few occurrences as well. However, Martic deserved to win and entered the list of second day’s upset queens at Linz.
Petra Martic plays the winner of the clash between Patricia Mayr-Achleitner and Sabine Lisicki.
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