Valeria Patiuk exorcizes Ganna Poznikhirenko in Girls’ Singles 1st round – US Open 2011
15 year-old Israeli Valeria Patiuk contested against 17 year-old Ukrainian Ganna Poznikhirenko in the main draw of the US Open Girls’ Singles event. The two were battling against each other for the first time on hard court 15 of
the USTA Billie Jean King National tennis Center. Patiuk won the match in straight sets of 6-4, 6-3.
Born on the 11th of May 1996, Valeria Patiuk is currently ranked at 138 in the juniors ranking and her year to date win-loss record is twenty one matches won and 12 matches lost. This year she entered fourteen tournaments
out of which, she bagged one title after defeating her compatriot Keren Shlomo.
Opening the first set was Poznikhirenko, who opened the score board to 1-0 by winning on her serve. In the following seven games both players kept on winning on their own serves and the score was tied at 4-4. At such decisive stage
of the match the first to break was Patiuk in the ninth game and in the tenth she was serving for the set, as she held her serve, she won the set with a 6-4 score.
Although, Poznikhirenko had smashed 2 aces and 2 winners, she was still unable to win most of her first and second serve points and thus, lost the set. Mean while, Patiuk had hit 67% of her first serves on target and with an exceptional
win of 23 out of 36 points, making it a 64% of first serves won, bagged the set.
The second set was again opened by Poznikhirenko and as both the players won on their serves by the first four games the score board read as 2-2. Valeria was first to break in the fifth game but not wanting history to repeat itself,
Ganna broke back to equalize the score at 3-3. In the seventh game Valeria got an upper hand as she broke Ganna for the second time and by holding her serve, she was leading with 5-3. This was it as Ganna served to catch up from two breaks down, Valeria pounced
at the first opportunity to break her adversary for the third and last time in the ninth game. Hence, she won the second set and the match.
The two players were extremely competitive and put on a tremendous performance, however, after one hour and forty minutes Patiuk had managed to qualify into the second round of the US Open 2011 Girls’ Singles event. She will now
be facing American Grace Minn, who defeated second seeded Irina Khromacheva.
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