Angelique/Tamarine overcome first hurdle

Agencies, Jakarta

The Indonesia-Thailand pairing of Angelique Widjaja and Tamarine Tanasugarn cruised to the second round of the US$110,000 Volvo Open in Pattaya, Thailand, after they beat top seeds Rossana Neva-De Los Rios/Tatiana Poutchek (Paraguay/Belarus) 7-5, 6-1 on Tuesday.

Angelique/Tamarine had to work hard against the Paraguayan- Belarus pair in the opening set, trailing 1-4, 4-5 before catching up at 5-5 and never looked back for a 7-5 win, according to coach Deddy Tedjamukti in Pattaya.

The Pattaya tournament is Angelique's first appearance after she led Indonesian team to a gold at the Asian Games in Busan.

Angelique, who has her singles ranking drop to 90 due particularly to her failure to defend the Wismilak title in Bali late August, was also to play her match against Martina Succa of Slovakia on Tuesday.

"Succa has just arrived in Pattaya today," Virginia Rusli, Angelique's manager, said here.

While Angie, as Angelique is popularly nicknamed, will start her singles campaign on Wednesday, her partner Tamarine, who is second seed, has already wrapped up her opening game with a 7-5, 6-1 win over Rossana Neva-De Los Rios on Monday, according to www.inatenis.com.

In other matches on Tuesday, top seed Tatiana Panova cruised past US Open junior champion Maria Kirilenko in an all-Russian first-round clash, AFP reported.

Panova took just 57 minutes to brush aside her 15-year old compatriot 6-1, 6-0, but in the only other match involving a seeded player, German left-hander and fourth seed Anca Barna was upset 4-6, 6-3, 6-2 by Russia's Anastassia Rodionova.

Kirilenko, who has received encouragement and financial assistance from former world number one Yevgeny Kafelnikov, began well by firing two aces and holding serve to love.

But her game crumbled as early as the long third game, during which three double-faults led to her dropping her serve.

Kirilenko made too many unforced errors to enable her to offer more than token resistance, and double-faulted the final two points of the first set.

And although she led 40-0 on Panova's serve when down 0-2 in the second she claimed just one of the next 14 points.