Vitalia Diatchenko eases past Anne Keothavong into first round – Generali Ladies Linz 2011
Russian Vitalia Diatchenko trashed Great Britain’s Anne Keothavong in straight sets to secure a main draw spot at the Generali Ladies Linz Open 2011, a WTA Tier – II event held on the indoor hard courts in Linz, Austria. She earned
a 6-4, 6-2 success over the 28-year-old British woman in an hour and fifteen minutes long match on Monday.
Diatchenko, ranked 128th in the Sony Ericsson WTA Premier rankings, displayed awe-inspiring skills to gun down the British woman, ranked thirty-two places above her, on their first duel. After triumphing over the British,
Diatchenko set course for her first WTA title.
The Russian broke Keothavong’s opening serve and took an early lead at the Intersport Arena. She bagged in remaining serves until she gifted away her serve in the seventh game and lost the edge. Despite extending her lead in the
proceeding game after breaking British’s serve again, she lost serve in the last game. However, the early break of serve Diatchenko earned led her clinch the opener with a 6-4 score line.
The blooming Russian went berserk in the second set as she unleashed barrage of groundstrokes to reel off first four games in a row. Regardless of losing her serve in the fifth game, Diatchenko kept her momentum to capitalise on
another breakpoint chance to her advantage in the last game and eventually sealed the set with a 6-2 victory.
Summing up the Russian’s performance, she formulated a slightly higher first serve share of 61 percent as compared to Great Britain’s 59 percent and registered an impressive 62 percent win on it. In addition to this, she warded
off only two out of five breakpoints faced but converted six out of eight breakpoint opportunities to his advantage to clinch comfortably.
Another unseeded player dug her way into the main draw. Stephanie Foretz Gacon of France crushed Russia’s Evgeniya Rodina with a breadstick to qualify for this competition.
The French woman unleashed her true colours in the opening set as she bombarded powerful groundstrokes and slices to reel off first five games in a row before Rodina could get on score sheet. Gacon then kept her serve again to
earn a breadstick.
World number 97, Gacon lost two early serves to subsequently go 4-1 down. After trailing 2-5, the French woman re-focused her strategy and made a comeback by wiping out next five games in a row.
30-year-old eventually sealed the deal by registering a 6-1, 7-5 score line in sixty-eight minutes on their fourth meeting.
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