Angelique/Tamarine overcome first hurdle
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.