Tamira Paszek breezes into the main draw at Porsche Tennis Grand Prix
Qualifying third seed Austrian Tamira Paszek warded off early resistance from the eighth seeded Slovak Zuzana Kucova and eventually dumped her in straight sets on Monday. She registered a 7-6(3), 6-2 win over the Slovak to advance
into the main draw of the 2011 Porsche Tennis Grand Prix at Stuttgart.
Ranked 88th in the WTA Premier event rankings, Paszek downed her 45 ranked lower Slovak rival on their first meeting at Porsche Arena in one hour and fifty-two minutes.
Paszek had an amazing start this season where she reached the second rounds through qualifiers at Hobart. Afterwards her form dipped as she exited from qualifiers or early rounds at the tournaments she participated. However, the
Austrian entered this tournament with a different strategy and overpowered Kazakhstani Sesil Karatantcheva and Slovak Lenka Jurikova in the first two rounds in straight sets to reach this final qualifying round.
In the opening set, the 20-year-old Austrian displayed tremendous skills to hold on to her opening serve. She had an acceptable first serve share of 71 percent as compared to Kucova’s slightly lower 70 percent and earned an assuring
64 percent win on it. Paszek committed zero double faults and broke Slovak’s serve three times. However, she lost her serve three times as well and took the set to tiebreaker where the Austrian prevailed to eventually clinch the set with a 7-6(3) win.
She kept her momentum rolling into the second set as she held her opening serve again spectacularly. Despite clobbering several unforced errors and five double faults, Paszek smacked five aces and earned an exceptional 91 percent
win on her poor first serve share. She lost one serve but broke Kucova’s serve three times to eventually seal the set with a convincing 6-2 victory.
The 28-year-old Kucova, who hasn’t had much activity this season and was ousted in early rounds in the few tournaments she entered, failed to ping the balls onto the lines. Her dreams for progressing far in an event this year ended
in the qualifiers again. Overall the Slovak had a much higher first serve share and clobbered less unforced errors though she failed to capitalise on it.
Paszek will next face German Andrea Petkovic in the first round.
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