Tamira Paszek cruises into the main draw of the Estoril Open
Top seeded Austrian Tamira Paszek trashed sixth seeded British Heather Watson with a bagel on Monday. She registered a 6-0, 6-3 victory over the 18-year-old British woman to advance into the main draw of the 2011 Estoril Open in
Oeiras, Portugal.
20-year-old Austrian has won seven out of her last ten matches but still hasn’t had much progress this season so far. Before entering this WTA premier event, she made it into the main draw through qualifiers at Stuttgart but lost
in the first round.
She is eyeing the $220,000 prize money at Estoril Court Central after triumphing over Russian Ekaterina Ivanova, British Laura Siegemund and Watson in straight sets of the qualifiers to advance into the first round of this tournament.
Ranked 87th in the WTA Premier rankings, Paszek took one hour and twenty-seven minutes to overpower the teenager, ranked 40 places below her, on their first meeting.
In the opening set, the Austrian gave top notch performance and dominated throughout. She unleashed flurry of ground strokes to reel off six games in a row and clinched with a bagel. Paszek had a higher first serve share of 69
percent as compared to Watson’s 55 percent and registered an impressive 75 percent win on it. She also saved all three breakpoints faced and converted three out of five breakpoint opportunities to her advantage.
Paszek carried her winning ways into the second set and held her opening serve plausibly. She then found the coveted break in the third game but lost the lead by losing her serve in the proceeding game. However the Austrian got
back on track as she broke the British’s serve again in the fifth game. Later she kept her lead and broke Watson’s serve again in the last game to seal the set with a 6-3 victory.
Watson on the other hand has had a better season so far. She made a quarter-final berth at Auckland, Memphis and Nassau ITF. The youngster entered this tournament confidently and overwhelmed Croat Karolina Sprem and Polish Katarzyna
Piter in the first two rounds of qualifiers. Unfortunately she exited by losing in this match due to dismal performance.
The Austrian will next face Belarusian Anastasia Yakimova who also reached this spot through qualifiers. She dumped Romanian Alexandra Cadantu, American Lindsay Lee-Waters and Greek Eleni Daniilidou in the qualifiers. Paszek hasn’t
lost a set in this event and if she continues to play like this, she can trash the Belarusian in straight set as well.
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