Vania King/ Yaroslava Shvedova defeat Nadia Petrova/ Anastasia Rodionova – French Open 2011
The American-Kazakh duo of Vania King and Yaroslava Shvedova played positive attacking tennis in the sunshine at Stade Roland Garros on Tuesday to move into the semi-final with a 7-5, 3-6, 6-2 victory over the Russian-Australian
duo of Nadia Petrova and Anastasia Rodionova.
The match started with some electric rallies, however, the quality of the game faded away as the Russian-Australian pair’s serve dropped giving away the first break of the match with one double-fault at the critical point. King
and Shvedova took the first set producing some less errors and with some flawless serving which has been one of the biggest improvements of their game.
The second set started superbly with a series of games as Petrova and Rodionova quickly changed their game plan by really attacking King and Shvedova and mixing up their game with some drop shots. However, the American-Kazakh pair
stood strong and made a breakthrough to tie the score at 3-all but it was Petrova and Rodionova who managed to close out the match superbly with a 6-3 scoreline.
However, the Russian-Australian pair failed to maintain their form and demonstrated their main weaknesses in their mentality with errors at crucial points in the final set. King and Shvedova appeared to be in a better shape and
reeled off next four games to clinch the final set with a 6-2 score line.
King and Shvedova played a great match, however, Petrova and Rodionova were a lot disappointed as they produced too many errors and were very inconsistent on their serve. They also seemed to have lost their mental toughness which
had helped them to reach the quarterfinals.
The American-Kazakh duo concluded their quarterfinal win by virtue of 58 percent of points in first serve, 40 percent of points on second serve and 50 percent of points on return. Moreover, they hit a single ace and racked up 98
points in total to claim their semi-final berth. By contrast, the Russian-Australian pair was pushed to the limits and could only rack up 48 percent of points on service, 45 percent of points on return and a total of 90 points in total in the match.
King and Shvedova now move on ahead to face the Czech pair of Andrea Hlavackova and Lucie Hradecka in the semi-final of the Roland Garros. The Czech duo moved past the Czech-Slovenian pair of Kveta Peschke and Katarina Srebotnik
in the fourth quarterfinal match of the day.
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