Su-Wei Hsieh topples Mathilde Johansson in the quarters - Guangzhou International Women's Open 2012
World number 53, Su-Wei Hsieh, continues to impress at the hard courts of China. She sent packing the 88th ranked Frenchwoman, Mathilde Johansson, in the quarter-final of the GRC Bank Guangzhou International Women's
Open on Thursday to book a spot in the last four of the tournament.
A 69 minutes conquest over the 27-year-old Frenchwoman witnessed straight sets score line of 6-3, 6-0 that extended the head-to-head lead of the 26-year-old Taiwanese professional to 3-1. She had earlier defeated Johansson on two
successive occurrences in 2007 during the semi-final at Redding as well as the final qualifying round of the Wimbledon Championships at London. However, recently the two contestants hadn’t faced each other so it was somewhat a novel face-off for them.
Hsieh started the encounter in a miserable way. She failed to hold serve in the opening game of the match but a timely comeback in the second game equalized the scores at 1-1. It was a classic match-up between the two athletes
as both players were in stunning run of form in the recent past.
The Taiwanese professional held serve in the third game and dug deep to win the second breakpoint of the match. She was leading the scores at 3-1 and a tight serve hold extended the lead to 4-1. Johansson couldn’t fight her way
back into the contest despite holding her serve on consistent basis in the remaining portion of the set. She was a break down that led to her downfall.
The 27-year-old French need a strong start to the second set but couldn’t deliver at the crunch situation; failing to hold serve and drowning to a trail of 0-1 at the start. Hsieh capitalized on the initial slump of her foe and
made it 2-0 with a comfortable serve hold. Another breakpoint for the Taiwanese starlet helped her to post a stupendous lead of 3-0 and the following serve hold further deteriorated her opponent’s status.
Hsieh was on her way to thump her opponent away for a bagel and she did in style. She will be up against the fourth seed Pole star, Urszula Radwanska, in the semis.
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