Polona Hercog cruises past Olivia Sanchez into the second round of Roland Garros
Slovene Polona Hercog slaughtered French wild card entrant Olivia Sanchez with a bagel and a breadstick to advance into the second round of the 2011 French Open, second of the two major Grand Slam events, on Sunday.
Ranked 57th in the Sony Ericsson WTA Premier Rankings, Hercog slew the Frenchwoman, ranked 95 places below her in, in their seventh meeting on tour. Hercog lost on her first two meetings but she won for the fourth straight
time after achieving success at Stade Roland Garros.
20-year-old Slovene showed nerves of steel in this first round match and outclassed Sanchez completely. She stormed into the opening set and unleashed flurry of ground strokes to reel off first six games in a row in just twenty-five
minutes. Hercog faced zero breakpoint and converted three out of five breakpoint opportunities to her advantage to earn a breadstick.
She produced an awesome first serve share of 69 percent as compared to Sanchez’s 16 percent and registered an impressive 73 percent win on it. The Slovene hammered 13 winners and smacked two aces as well.
Hercog carried same momentum into the final set as she lost just one game but won remaining six games superbly to clinch with a breadstick. She clobbered eleven unforced errors to Sanchez’s seventeen and committed double faults
once to French woman’s seven which made the difference. In addition to this, the Slovene converted three out of seven breakpoint opportunities to her advantage to ease past Sanchez easily.
28-year-old Sanchez had a drastic season so far as she won only two matches this season and lost eleven. She barely survived in front of her home crowd who were all heartbroken with her disappointing performance.
The Slovene, on the other hand, had a poor form this season as well but she re-formed herself when it was desired the most. She made a semi-final berth at Monterrey but her form steeply dipped afterwards. Hercog managed to reach
quarters at Barcelona but exited from the opening round at Brussels before entering this major clay court tournament.
She will next face the winner of the match between 29th seeded Chinese Shuai Peng and Austrian Tamira Paszek. If the Slovene keeps her form, she can overcome threat from any player. However, she will have to practice
harder to face seeded players.
Another wild card who will be joining Sanchez in the stands is Australian Casey Dellacqua. Dellacqua lost to 32nd seeded Bulgarian Tsvetana Pironkova on another court with a 5-7, 3-6 defeat in less than ninety minutes.
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