Agnieszka Radwanska was saved by the rain to be the strong player many know her to be. She turned a very hard opening set in the first to a runaway that gave her a 7-6(3), 6-1 straight set win over Qiang Wang on Grandstand court at the Miami Open. The hour-long delay gave the 28-year-old fifth seed time to regroup and finish strong at Crandon Park Tennis Center.
The world number eight easily defeated at the Chinese star three times last season with two of those runs ending in title victories. Radwanska has allowed just five game wins or less to Wang with the goal of keeping the pace the same. Though her third-round loss at Indian Wells was against a higher ranked player from China, the likelihood of having a challenging first rounder in Miami was much less.
She didn’t expect to be challenged in the opening games but despite going into deuce, Radwanska pulled out the service hold and the break to lead. Wang captured her first break but knew that staying competitive to a degree was going to prove difficult. She dug in and fought to deuce in each decision only to see the lead grow for Radwanska. She sat at 4-1 with another hold of serve that helped her avoid troubles and push for the set.
Wang stopped the world number eight in her tracks snapping the three-game winning streak with an important hold in the sixth. Radwanska followed suit with her win of the seventh that put the pressure on the Chinese star to stay alive. Wang held for another moment but she was all out of options when the ball was back in Radwanska’s hands. Having enough in the tank to answer, Wang pushed the Polish tennis star to deuce before winning another game to serve for a chance at extending the set.
Wang pulled off the comeback of her tournament to date as the three-game margin was completely erased forcing Radwanska into a tight race to seven games. She made the first step to get out front in the 11th but capturing the 12th was going to take effort. She had two set points on the Chinese star but saw it erased in a flash. Deuce spelled out troubles for Radwanska who fell under the strength of Wang forcing a tiebreaker to be put into motion.
The Pole knew that she had to mean business and showed her fight to lead 5-0. The problems came to gaining the final two points as she committed a double fault and unforced errors to cut the margin in half. The cause for concern increased leaving her no choice but to finish as strong as she could which she did to finish the first set in 1 hour and 10 minutes. The returns nearly killed the fifth seed who suffered by winning less than half against Wang.
The need for improvements had to come in the second which she did in the opening game breaking Wang right off the bat. She reached three game points on serve in the second when the rain began to fall on court suspending play. After a 64-minute delay Wang struck back to recover from the 0-40 score in the second going on to win the break.
Radwanska knew that she couldn’t allow too much room for opponent to use on court answering with two straight wins to conduct the set on her terms. It turned into another 4-1 hold for Radwanska but she didn’t want to have a repeat of what occurred in the opening set. She made it a 5-1 command on the verge of closing things out for her. Radwanska struck back with great returns that leveled her on the score in the seventh. She struck back to get the control and won the match on deuce to finish her straight sets victory in 1 hour and 43 minutes.
Her second serve fared best in the last set that allowed her to be the dominant factor to get out of a jam. She’ll hope that her third round fairs better against the winner between Kateryna Bondarenko and Mirjana Lucic-Baroni.
No comments:
Post a Comment