Svetlana Kuznetsova hammers Caroline Wozniacki in second round – Apia International Sydney 2013
After a three hour and 47-minute marathon, reigning world number 10, Caroline Wozniacki, stoops out to the unseeded Russian, Svetlana Kuznetsova, in the second round of Apia International Sydney tournament on Tuesday afternoon.
Some exceptional power hitting from the 85th ranked Russian forced seventh seed Wozniacki to submit in the third set of the match. The final score settled at 7-6(4), 1-6, 6-2, in favour of Kuznetsova.
It was a see-saw battle all the way to the finish. Kuznetsova dominated the opening half of the match but a very strong comeback was seen from the Dane contestant in the second set. It appeared as if Wozniacki will sustain her
winning momentum in the decisive set and would steal the show but it went the other way round. An all-round onslaught from the former world number two completely devastated Wozniacki in the third set, expelling her out of the WTA Tour event in Sydney, Australia.
Kuznetsova was off to a rapid start in the opening set, breaking the seventh seeded Dane in the third game to impose a 3-1 lead. Wozniacki backfired to level the scores to 4-4 in the eighth game and managed to drag the set in to
a tie-break round. The world number 10 could barely bag four points in the tie-break and gifted away the opener to Kuznetsova at 6-7(4).
After dropping the first set cheaply, Wozniacki came roaring in the following set and nailed three successive breaks of serve to overwhelm her Russian opponent. She finished off the second set with a breadstick at 6-1 to bring
the match back on even terms.
Kuznetsova drew early blood in the very first game of the decider and imposed a 2-0 lead over the hot favourite Dane. Wozniacki kept labouring extremely hard to break even in the set but all her efforts were brutally crushed by
another cracking break point conversion from the unseeded Russian in the seventh game. Kuznetsova had not trouble in serving out of the matchup at 5-2, sealing her surprise victory with a thudding ace down the line and qualifying for the quarter-final rounds
of Apia International Sydney.
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