Sorana Cirstea routs Petra Martic to clear round one - BNP Paribas Luxembourg Open 2012
World number 26, Sorana Cirstea, reached the second round of the BGL BNP Paribas Luxembourg Open at the expense of the 61st ranked Croatian star, Petra Martic, on Tuesday. She dismissed the 21-year-old in just 52 minutes with final scores of 6-2, 6-2.
Martic thumped the 22-year-old Romanian in straight sets in the last week at the Generali Ladies Linz to post the biggest upset of the tournament in the first round. However, the Romanian got her revenge in the next week. She was agonized by her loss in Linz and wanted to write off the Croatian as early as she could; smashed some blistering winners down the line and the cries of ‘come on’ depicted the level of enmity at the courts.
Cirstea didn’t make a single mistake on her serve in the opening set; lost just one point in the three games she served. It was a compact and planned performance from the 22-year-old Romanian. She broke serve in the sixth game of the match to take a lead of 4-2 and did that again in the following return game to pull curtains for the Croatian in the opening set.
The second witnessed a similar pedigree from the Romanian who carried the momentum until the end of the match. Martic was under the cosh from the start; almost lost a breakpoint in the second serve game but did well to hang on. However, the sixth game witnessed lethal hitting from sixth seed Cirstea who the breakpoint and coupled it with a tight serve hold to make it 5-2.
The 21-year-old Croatian failed to hold serve again in the eighth game of the second set and gifted the triumph to her rival who thoroughly deserved it after smashing some fantastic winners in the match. Cirstea had the game under control from the word go and didn’t waste a single opportunity to pounce on her rival.
The Romanian won 60 points in total compared to 32 of her rival. She smashed two aces and committed half (2) double-faults compared to her rival. She is comfortably in the second round and faces Vera Dushevina or Ksenia Pervak depending on whoever wins the first round clash.
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