Valeria Savinykh ousts Lesia Tsurenko in opening round – Tashkent Open 2011
Ranked at number 133 in the world, Valeria Savinykh of Russia won her opening round match at the Tashkent Open, defeating the unseeded Ukrainian, Lesia Tsurenko, in straight sets on Monday afternoon.
The contest took place on the hard courts of the Tashkent Tennis Center, in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, with Savinykh winning standing as the winner at 6-4, 6-3, to make it into the second round of the WTA (Women’s Tennis Association)
event.
Tsurenko hung in the matchup for just one hour twenty four minutes before surrendering to the belligerent Russian in the second set. Savinykh registered her 27rd victory of the running WTA season and the first one against
the Ukrainian on Monday, to improve her all-time head-to-head series by 1-2. The last time she faced Tsurenko was in Dubai last year, when she got ousted in a three-setter, 1-6, 6-4, 2-6, in the round of 32 of the tournament.
Tsurenko delivered 59 per cent of her serve on target, coughing seven double faults in the game to award some crucial un-fought points to the Russian opponent. Savinykh secured 24 out of her 37 first serve points in the contest
and nailed six out of 11 break opportunities to come out as the winner in the end. The Ukrainian had a total of 10 break points in the match but she squandered six of them before converting just four to finish the matchup on the losing side.
An action packed opening set was witnessed, with a number of serve breaks from both contestants and exchanges of assertive winners. Tsurenko registered four cracking serve breaks but was overrun by the aggressive game play of Savinykh,
who nailed five crushing break point conversions to edge past the Ukrainian in the opener. Five double faults from Tsurenko assisted Savinykh to close out the opening set at 6-4, after a stiff contest.
Intense tennis continued in the following set as well, but Tsurenko failed to crack in a serve break this time round and dropped the set to let Savinykh conclude victory at 6-3. The Russian moves into the second round of the tournament
to face the fourth seeded Latvian contestant, Anastasija Sevastova, for a place in the quarter-finals.
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