Sofia Arvidsson stuns Roberta Vinci in the opening round – Swedish Open 2012
World number 55, Sofia Arvidsson, delighted the home crowd with a majestic triumph over the fourth seed Italian, Roberta Vinci, in the opening round clash of the Sony Ericsson Swedish Open.
A good fighting spirit from the 28-year-old Swede helped her climb a mountain in just 79 minutes on the eve of Tuesday. She rounded off the match in straight sets 6-4, 7-5 and dispatched the 26th ranked fourth seeded
contestant on her way back to Italy.
Both experienced contestants had faced each other on six different occurrences before this encounter. Unsurprisingly, the 29-year-old Italian led the head-to-head series by 5-1 before this encounter.
However, the 55th ranked Swede had earlier ousted the Italian in the opening round of the Roland Garros French Open in May. So, there was a slight chance of her repeating the similar performance again but the odds were
still in favour of the fourth seed Italian who had been on a roll in the recent past winning trophies; although mostly in doubles category.
Serve holds at both ends commenced the proceedings in traditional fashion. However, the contenders started trading breakpoints in succession. No damage was done to the either party and the scores were kept together at 4-4 after
a dramatic see-saw battle.
Arvidsson broke the shackles and held her serve to love that ignited the series of roars from the small crowd who gathered to witness their local queen battle it out against the superior ranked contender. Vinci couldn’t hold serve
in the following game that proved to be the final action from the first half of the match.
Vinci commenced the second set in aggressive fashion and despite wasting an opportunity to break serve once in the opening game, she won the breakpoint on the second chance and led the scores 1-0. A commanding serve hold took the
scores to 2-0 in her favour.
Arvidsson lost a breakpoint but won three breakthroughs back on the trot to win the match from a trail of 2-5. It was a remarkable achievement and the Swede stated, "I'm really excited. It was a great match and a great atmosphere
and I just enjoyed every point we played. I was down 2-5 in the second and was a little bit lucky here and there and managed to turn it around, which was really pleasing to do in front of my home crowd."
Arantxa Rus will be her next test.
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