Varvara Lepchenko squalls past Edina Gallovits to reach the 1st round – BNP Paribas Open 2012
Arch rivals, Edina Gallovits of Romania and Varvara Lepchenko of America, went face-to-face in the final qualifying round of the BNP Paribas Open on Tuesday. The latter trashed the former in the straight sets 6-1, 6-1 to register
her third head-to-head triumph in their seventh meeting on courts.
The contest was played on hard courts and was finished off within an hour’s time. World number 96, Gallovits, looked a bit tired and out of form with her usual thumping forehands missing the sweet spot of her racquet. She defeated
the 19-years-old Czech teen, Karolina Pliskova, in the opening round but wasn’t able to find the same rhythm in her play on Tuesday.
It was a traditional start to the match with both players hanging on to their respective serve games to push the scores at 1-1. A classic combination of pace and accuracy won the first breakpoint for the American who went on to
break another serve of her opponent in the fifth game that gave her an unassailable lead of 4-1.
It was getting worst for the Romanian who went down 1-5 after Lepchenko held her serve without any trouble at all. She had to hold her serve to stay in the set but failed to do so; could only win a single point and was clearly
down and out with her timing.
A start to the second set was even worse for the Romanian who lost a couple of early breakpoints to go down 0-4. It shows the level of domination from the American who held another serve to register a resounding lead of 5-0. Gallovits
held her serve for the first time in the sixth game but only to see her opponent raising her racquet and thanking crowd for their support at the end of the following game.
It was a very disappointing match considering the fact that both players had a big history behind them. The Romanian had won four matches against Lepchenko before this encounter and was leading the head-to-head scores with 4-2
but she couldn’t take advantage of the psychological pressure.
Lepchenko will lock horns with her fellow qualifier from Russian, Alexandra Panova, in the first round.
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