Trials and tribulations of Jarka

When the WTA last performed it's carve up of unforced errors, it made a clerical mistake and handed an extra helping to Australia's second ranked female player Jarmila Gajdosova. In her first match in singles at the 2012 Aus Open - aka match one on day 2 at Hisense Arena - Jarka used many of her error ration in the first game, and accordingly lost serve. The talented Russian who pushed Stosur to the limit at the US Open last year held her serve and was the quicker out of the blocks, leaving Gajdosova standing at the starting gates, and that should be the final mixed metaphor for today.

Jarmila managed to find rhythm on her next lot of service games but could not break down the Kirilenko delivery. Too many times opportunities went begging because of the Aussie's refusal to be patient and her penchant for hitting outright winners. Down a break requires thoughtful deliberation when dealing with an opponent's serve.

Maria played careful and effective tennis, keeping errors to a minimum, and this frustrated Jarka into premature 'go for glory' shots. Serving for the set at 5-4 Kirilenko tried her hardest to assist Gajdosova by double faulting as much as she could, but even this benevolence could not outweigh the inefficiency of Jarka to take toll of the situation.
Kirilenko 6-4 ahead.

The extraordinary thing about this match is that nothing extraordinary was occurring from Kirilenko - all that she did in the set was to ensure the ball remained in play, safe in the knowledge that Gajdosova would do all the attacking and fail on enough occasions to allow Maria the lead.
Set two began well enough with Jarka gaining game points quickly, only to waste them and virtually give the game away, down a set and an a break. All the attractive tennis flowed from the Aussie racquet, but all the less exciting and winning tennis was the domain of Kirilenko.

The fourth game produced several chances for Jarka, but the net was her enemy on break points as she failed to convert. This would turn out to be her last hope dashed, because the cool Russian player broke once more and served for the match at 6-4 5-2.

Jarmila won the first 3 points decisively but to be true to her form all match she wasted the three break points and Maria continued to be a problem to be solved. 6-4 6-2 but until there is an injection of proactive forcing shots into her consistent game, Kirilenko is destined to only cause nuisance value when taking on the very top players.