Sofia Arvidsson stuns Marion Bartoli and clears round two – Kremlin Cup 2012
World number 46, Sofia Arvidsson, dumped the 10th ranked French star, Marion Bartoli, in the second round clash of the Kremlin Cup on Wednesday. She trashed the second seed French in straight sets 6-3, 6-0 and booked
a berth in the quarter-final in just an hour and 16 minutes.
It was a terrible blow for the 28-year-old French who was eyeing to clinch the ninth spot to become an alternative entry for the year-end finale scheduled to be contested at Istanbul. In the past, the 28-year-old Swede had defeated
her French age-fellow on four different occurrences and lost just twice but they were playing a contest after a gap of almost four years so prior results didn’t have much impact.
Arvidsson never looked to be threatened by the 10th ranked French. She played her natural game and showed her class at the hard courts of Moscow. The Swede had a desired start; held her serve in the first game and stole
a breakthrough under the nose of her rival to make it 2-0. However, she couldn’t protect the lead for long as the French broke serve back in the following game and squeezed a tight hold to level the scores at 2-2.
Both players contested three back-to-back breakpoints shared in the ratio of 2:1 in favour of the Swede who made no mistake in the ninth game of the opening set to bag the first phase. It was a cumbersome task for the double-handed
French to fight back a set down and the second set proceedings didn’t help her cause at all.
Arvidsson kept on making sweetly timed returns on her foe’s serve. She fought hard to snatch a breakpoint in the first game of the second set and held her serve to make it 2-0 in her favour. Once again, a gruelling battle between
the two athletes resulted in favour of the 28-year-old Swede who lost just one point on her serve to make it 4-0.
Bartoli failed to hold serve on third straight occurrence and fall victim to a bagel. Maria Kirilenko and Yaroslava Shvedova will battle it out on Thursday to book a date with Sofia Arvidsson.
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