RI's Wynne wilts as miffed Mirza crashes out in Bali
Bruce Emond, The Jakarta Post, Nusa Dua, Bali
National number two Wynne Prakusya had only herself to blame in a second round loss at the Wismilak International on Tuesday, while much heralded Indian teenager Sania Mirza departed in a hit-and-miss debacle.
Wynne played into the hands of China's Zi Yan -- both of them. Yan, two-fisted off both flanks, attacked at will as the Surakarta native resorted to safe, defensive tennis in their first round match on the center court here.
Gifted a wild card into the draw when injured national number one Angie Widjaja withdrew, the 24-year-old Indonesian rued her failure to seize the opportunity, especially when she let the first set rush by.
"I felt a bit under pressure and confused about how to play, whether to stay defensive or not because my opponent was applying so much pressure," said the Indonesian, whose ranking has risen about 200 places to 296 since the beginning of the year thanks to a successful challenger circuit in Southeast Asia.
She told the postmatch press conference that she knew the formula to overcome her 181st ranked opponent who came through three rounds of qualifying, but by then it was too late.
"I should have mixed it up, hitting attacking shots followed by dinks."
Wynne and partner Janet Lee of Chinese Taipei kept their campaign going in the doubles, winning 6-3, 6-4 over Nuria Llagostera Vives of Spain and Martina Muller of Germany.
In the evening match on center court, eighth seeded Mirza went for broke on nearly every point, strangely unable to string more than two or three points together against Ekaterina Bychkova, a Russian baseliner ranked 55 places below her at 97.
When the draw was announced on Sunday, almost everybody looked ahead to the prospect of a Mirza-Lindsay Davenport clash in the quarterfinals.
Unfortunately for the Indian, Bychkova was not playing by the script.
A Mirza stinging winner was followed by a smacked forehand into the net, a pounding service followed moments later by a horrendous double fault. From 3-3 in the first set, the Indian's game went haywire as she fell 6-3, 6-2, the Russian growing in confidence as the match went on.
"I was never really in it, she played well but ..." Mirza said, shrugging her shoulders and blaming eight weeks of continuous play for her listless performance.
There may have been other things on her mind; her fourth round run at the U.S. Open last week was followed by a fatwa from Indian Muslim organization decrying her midriff-baring tennis outfits as corrupting the morals of teenagers.
The 18 year old was buttoned down in Bali, wearing a white tennis shirt in place of her usual attire. She seemed tense in her postmatch press conference, praising the beauty of Bali at one point and then retorting that "you'd be writing something different if I'd won" when asked if her problem was that she had no plan B to change a losing game.
When asked to comment on the "Islam controversy", Mirza, who is Muslim, snapped, "I don't want to talk about religion" and walked out of the room.
In other matches, Meghann Shaughnessy of the U.S. was defeated by Laura Pous Tio of Spain 6-4, 4-6, 6-1; Aiko Nakamura won an all-Japanese contest against Tomoko Yonemura 7-6 (7), 7-5; Spanish doubles specialist Virginia Ruano Pascual eclipsed China's Tiantian Sun 6-2, 6-2 and Jie Zheng, yet another of the rising Chinese players, beat Maria Vento-Kabchi of Venezuela 6-3, 6-4.
In a tight battle of two of the game's talented young players on the verge of their big break, German Anna-Lena Groenefeld outlasted Croatia's Karolina Sprem 7-5, 5-7, 6-4.