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Easy outing for Maria Kirilenko and Casey Dellacqua
A STROLL IN THE PARK: Maria Kirilenko lost only four games in beating Neha Uberoi.
Kolkata: Fourth seed Maria Kirilenko had an easy outing in the air-conditioned confines of the Netaji Indoor stadium here, outclassing Neha Uberoi 6-2, 6-2 in a first round match at the Sunfeast Open on Monday.
The 20-year-old Kirilenko, ranked as high as number 21 last year and now ranked a few spots below Sania Mirza, served six aces and lost only 10 points on serve, finishing the match in just over an hour. She was particularly impressive in the first set, seemingly motoring along in first gear, creating five break point opportunities and getting her own first serves in on a regular basis.
For the first half-hour, Uberoi didn’t even get a look at her opponent’s serve: she had one crashing backhand winner; the other point she won was on a double fault. Uberoi’s own service games went to deuce each time, and she was broken twice.
The Russian rifled her groundstrokes, flat, deep and with fair accuracy; Uberoi found herself, more often than not, out of position and found it hard to handle Kirilenko’s cross-court shots, and only managed to stay in points by moon-balling. Even more detrimental to her cause, several attempts to construct points ended with simple errors on the volley.
One positive was her attitude. Uberoi was broken at the start of the second set but with nothing to lose, she continued to fight; many in her state would have lost motivation and folded. She raced busily across the baseline and pulled off a couple of audacious cross-court winners.
Then, against the run of play, Uberoi broke her opponent: a ferocious cross-court winner and two unexpected errors from her opponent brought Uberoi level on 2-2, and it seemed back into the set.
That, however, was the last game she would win. Kirilenko pushed up her game a notch. Uberoi, the world number 267, failed to hold in her next two service games, and that was that.
Earlier in the day, Australian Casey Dellacqua capitalised on her opponent’s weak serving to take out Aleksandra Wozniak of Canada 6-2, 6-3. Ektaterina Ivanova converted four out of a total of five break points to beat Naomi Cavaday 6-3, 2-6, 6-2.
The results: Singles: Maria Kirilenko bt Neha Uberoi 6-2, 6-2; Casey Dellacqua bt Aleksandra Wozniak 6-2, 6-3; Ektaterina Ivanova bt Naomi Cavaday 6-3, 2-6, 6-2; Jarmila Gajdosova bt Youlia Fedossova 6-3, 6-4. Yung-Jan Chan bt Kyra Shroff 6-0, 6-0.
Doubles: Ipek Senoglu & Yaroslava Shvedova bt Courtney Nagle & Robin Stephenson 7-6(6), 6-1.
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