Yaroslava Shvedova beats injury stricken Dominika Cibulkova in round one – China Open 2012
World number 35, Yaroslava Shvedova, booked a berth in the second round of the China Open on Saturday after the 13th ranked Slovak star, Dominika Cibulkova, withdrew from the contest in the second set after incurring
an injury. The scores at that time were 6-4, 4-1 in favour of the Kazakh who was the most probable winner of the encounter anyway. Cibulkova resisted for 79 minutes at the hard courts of Beijing but couldn’t continue considering her poor health.
Shvedova commenced the encounter with a breakthrough and took a lead of 2-0 courtesy a very tight serve hold. She broke serve again to make it 3-0 in her favour but couldn’t protect the second breakthrough and lost the fourth game
that reduced the trail to 1-3 for the Slovak. However, the return game for the 25-year-old Kazakh was emphatic enough to earn her a lead of three games again. This time around she held her serve and took a posted a resounding lead of 5-1.
Things looked terrible for the 23-year-old Slovak. However, she played a little cameo to turn the things around for quite some time. She held her serve in the seventh game and broke serve to keep the set alive. A serve for the
12th seed Cibulkova lowered the trail to 4-5. However, she needed to break serve again to keep her hopes alive but she failed to do so and lost the opening set battle in the 10th game.
The second set witnessed a serve hold for the Slovak. However, it was the only game that she could win in the rest of the match proceedings. Shvedova held her serve and converted the fifth allotted breakpoint in the following game
to take the lead. It was the longest game of the match and featured eight deuces before the 35th ranked Kazakh could sneak a breakpoint.
Cibulkova could never fight back into the contest and lost the breakpoint in the fifth game as well that piled up a trail of 1-4. It was that time when she decided to call it off because she wasn’t feeling very good and wanted
to take some rest.
Yaroslava Shvedova plays the successful contender of the contest between Italian contestant, Roberta Vinci, and the qualifier that is yet to be decided.
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