Samantha Stosur plonks Anabel Medina Garrigues to reach round three - Western and Southern Open 2012
World number six, Samantha Stosur, rallied past the 30-year-old Spaniard, Anabel Medina Garrigues, in a classic three-setter during the second round clash of Western and Southern Open on Tuesday. She pocketed the win 6-3, 6(6)-7,
6-4 in a battle of two hours and 37 minutes at the hard courts of Cincinnati.
The opening set witnessed a series of serve holds before a rare breakpoint was won by the Aussie starlet who took a lead of 4-2 by the end of the six games. She lost just three points on her following two serves to make sure the
opening set ended in her favour.
Stosur was close on winning another breakpoint in the eighth game but the Spanish superstar held her nerve to extend the set further. However, she couldn’t benefit from that effort and failed to break back to keep the set alive.
No breakthroughs were witnessed in the second set despite a total of four allotted breakpoints. Both players twice had an opportunity to break serve but they failed to do so that allowed the set to enter into a tie-breaker round.
The 38th ranked Spaniard utilized her experience to edge past her rival in the tie-breaker and levelled the set scores at one apiece.
Two successive breakpoints for Garrigues at the start of the final set gave her a resounding lead of 4-0. However, she couldn’t make use of the supreme opportunity and lost two breakpoints in succession that levelled the scores
at 4-4.
It was a terrific comeback from the Aussie starlet who broke serve for the third time in a row to confirm her victory.
Stosur commented, "It was an interesting third set considering the whole match was really quite close. There were no breaks in the second set, and then straight away I got myself in quite a hole quite quickly. I thought I could
still regroup and close that gap just a little bit, and if you do that, you never know what can happen. I got on a roll and managed to squeeze it out."
Samantha Stosur awaits the winner of Anna Tatishvili and Ekaterina Makarova clash to play in round three.
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