Sabine Lisicki vs Daniela Hantuchova – Match Preview: Tournament of Championships 2011
The second match that will take place for the season-ending Commonwealth Bank Tournament of Champions 2011 is between German Sabine Lisicki and Slovakian Daniela Hantuchova. The two will take up the gauntlet on indoor hard courts
of Bali International Convention Centre in Bali, Indonesia.
Both the contenders have met only twice prior to this event; once in 2008 and the last time was this year. In the head-to-head series, the two rivals split lopsided meetings as each player has bagged a game against the other and
this will be the third time that they will clash against each other in their professional career.
The first time they duelled against each other was in 2008 on hard courts of Luxembourg at the BGL BNP Paribas Luxembourg Open and Hantuchova had gotten the best of Lisicki in straight sets. Nevertheless, the last time they entered
into a brawl was this year at the AEGON Classic which is held annually in Birmingham. The two had clashed on grass courts during the final and emerging victorious was Lisicki, who not only avenged her loss against Hantuchova but also took the winner’s silverware.
Albeit, Hantuchova bagged a game against Lisicki on hard surface, Lisicki has proved to be a force one should not reckon with.
Lisicki made her debut appearance in 2009 and although she lost her first match against Aravane Rezai, she managed to bag the second by defeating Melinda Czink.
Nevertheless, this year Lisicki as shown extraordinary results as a quarterfinalist and a semifinalist in most of the events she took part in. Moreover, she bagged two WTA tournaments this year; in Birmingham and the other was
in Dallas by defeating Aravane Rezai in the final.
In addition, German Lisicki was a semi finalist at Wimbledon and Stanford. This year she also reached her career high singles ranking of world number 17 and has played against world class players such as Maria Sharapova, thirteen
times Grand Slam champion Serna Williams, Marion Bartoli and many more.
On the contrary, Hantuchova made her debut appearance in 2006 and saw an early round exit. However, she came out as a runner-up as she lost to Lindsay Davenport the second time she qualified which was in 2007. The following year
Hantuchova again entered the competition and this time she was a semifinalist.
Although in her fourth appearance which was in 2010 Hantuchova was not able to qualify into further rounds but she still managed to bag one of her matches.
This year Hantuchova has had a topsy turvy season and although, in the beginning of the year she saw early round exits, she eventually improved in the middle and even bagged a title on hard courts of Pattaya City. She ousted Russian
Vera Zvonareva and then in the clash of the title defeated Sara Errani. However, towards the end of the year she once again saw a few early round exits.
Many tennis pundits and gurus believe that Lisicki will overpower the Slovakian in straight sets. Nonetheless, given her experience one really can’t predict what she might have up her sleeve.
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