Samantha Stosur and Lucie Safarova Reach Third Round at 2011 Sony Ericsson Open
World number 5 Samantha Stosur of Australia secured a thumping 6-2, 6-1 victory over the Chinese Jie Zhang on Thursday to reach the third round of 2011 Sony Ericsson Open in Miami.
The Australian number one tennis-pro played aggressive tennis throughout and presented a very few scoring chances to her opponent. She opened the first set in fine fashion and broke the serve early to gain the psychological advantage. The fourth seed lost only a couple of games in the set to lead the score 1-0.
The second set tells a similar story as well. Stosur completely dominated the challenger with her strong and effective ground strokes and fired blistering serves to her opponent’s half of the court. The Australian made three serve breaks in the second set to finish the match in just over an hour.
Stosur’s first serve conversion was excellent as she converted a very impressive percentage of the points on her serve. In addition, her defense was formidable as well and saved her crucial points during the contest. Contrastingly the Chinese looked completely out of sorts and committed a large number of unforced errors in the match. She certainly had chances but was unable to convert them which eventually led to her downfall.
The Australian has been struggling to find her form lately. She fell in the first round of Sydney and third round of Australian Open earlier this year. She was then knocked out in the third round of Indian Wells. The 26 year old has two WTA titles to her name and will be hoping to bring more consistency to her game as she takes on Lucie Safarova of Czech Republic in the third round match at the premier WTA tournament.
Meanwhile, Czech Lucie Safarova thrashed out Patty Schnyder of Switzerland to make it to the third round at the tournament.
Safarova started off well and took the first set 6-2. In the second set she was given a tough time by the challenger but she regrouped herself and counter attacked to win the match in two sets. Safarova made the most of presented opportunities and converted the very first match point in the final set to end the proceedings.
Schnyder on the other hand smashed several forehands and backhands wide of the court and was forced to defend for the most part of the match.
Safarova has been in reasonable form since the start of this season with her most considerable achievement coming at Malaysian Open where she reached the finals. However, she must overcome the discrepancies in her game if she wants to stand a chance against top seeded players at the ATP Maters 1000 event.
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