Wednesday, 18 January 2017

Kuznetsova easily again

Svetlana Kuznetsova, the tournament's eighth seed, had Australian 17 year old wildcard Jaimee Fourlis as her opponent.  The 414th ranked Fourlis, in her first Aus Open, won her first round clash with American Anna Tatishvili in two sets.  Kuznetsova lost one game in her destruction of Colombia's Mariana Duque-Marino.

Jaimee won the toss and served, and after a nervous start, double faulting, and then being down 0-40, she fought back with attacking tennis to save four break points.  Sadly she couldn't save a fifth, but she matched it with the eighth seed and showed plenty of promise just  in that one rather lengthy game.

The break back came, in large part due to a run of double faults from the Russian.  1-1.

After clearing the cobwebs, Kuznetsova dealt with the Aussie's serve, and she was too experienced and able to deal with it in ways probably foreign to the standard expectations of a player relatively new to the world stage.

4-1 and quickly closing in on set one.

Games went with serve, but Fourlis had chances to break Kuznetsova when the eighth seed was serving for the set.  Not quite and 6-2 to Svetlana.

A confident start to set two for Jaimee with good serving and excellent groundstroke exchanges forcing Kuznetsova into error and contributing a winner too. 1-0.
After holding a point for 2-1, Jaimee let slip her grip and Svetlana claimed the break to lead 2-1 instead.

All of a sudden, Kuznetsova began her moaning and grunting to accompany her shot making.  Completely unnecessary, a distraction at best, gamesmanship perhaps, cheating when all is said and done.  The tennis remained the same with the Russian holding serve and with the break in hand held a 3-1 advantage.

A wasted game point turned into another service break and Jaimee faced real problems at 1-4.  Too many unforced errors were outweighing some excellent shots and preventing the set from becoming a contest.

Serving at 1-5 to stay a little longer in the match, Jaimee saved a couple of match points in another long game, but like the first game of the match she fell short and the match was 6-2 6-1 to Kuznetsova who is now in the third round.

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