Vera Dushevina overcomes Mona Barthel in the opening round – Collector Swedish Open 2011
Fifth-seeded Vera Dushevina of Russia beat Mona Barthel of Germany 6-2, 7-6(2) to reach the second round of Collector Swedish Open 2011, as the Russian took one hour and twenty minutes to send the German packing in straight sets.
It seemed that throughout the match Barthel at times forgot the tactics that saw her beat much skilled players like Bethanie Mattek-Sands and Barbora Zahlavova Strycova at the Copenhagen tournament just a month ago.
The power of Dushevina’s serve kept her out of trouble and produced a defensive response from Barthel who struggled to work her way on to the baseline and stayed there to attack. Dushevina smacked winner after winner and kept Barthel
out of play on her service games as the German tried in vain to recoup the break.
The German easily allowed her Russian opponent to take the opener and served for the second set at 6-5, but Barthel revived her chances with a break of her own to take it to the tie-breaker. However, Barthel’s hopes of comeback
were efficiently brought to a conclusion when she double-faulted to lose the tie-break against the Russian.
It looked like the match would be a one way affair for the Russian, as she came out and broke Barthel to take the opener set. However, a tight second set saw Barthel take score to love after taking the set in a tiebreak but then
the 24-year-old Dushevina switched it up and played an all out attack style game and Barthel struggled to find a way to break her.
The Russian used her incredible power to frustrate Barthel who was quite irritated by the second set. The consistency of Dushevina was incredible and secured her a break in the tie-break game towards a 4-2 lead.
The pure sportsmanship and fire power of Dushevina made it impossible for Barthel to try and force a break as Dushevina served for the match. With some excellent serving and strong ground strokes, Dushevina served for the match,
defeating the German 6-2, 7-6(2) for a place in the second round of Collector Swedish Open against the Swede, Johanna Larsson.
With this win, the 24-year-old Dushevina has improved her year-to-date win/loss mark to 9/13 matches and now leads their head-to-head series against the German to 1-0.
She now moves on to face Johanna Larsson in the second round of collector Swedish Open for the first time in her career.
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