Kirilenko starts Tokyo meet in style
Tokyo, Sept. 26: Russia’s Maria Kirilenko showed her supremacy on Sunday as she began her campaign in the star-studded Pan Pacific Open women’s tennis tournament.
Kirilenko, ranked 24th in the world, beat Spain’s Maria Jose Martinez Sanchez 6-3, 6-7 (5/7), 6-1 in the $two-million hard court tournament.
Twenty-five out of the world’s top 30 players are taking part, with only Kim Clijsters, Serena and Venus Williams, Justine Henin and Li Na missing. “I was serving so good today. I did a lot of aces,” Kirilenko said.
She almost seemed to finish off the match early, after taking the first set and led the second set 5-3. But then Martinez Sanchez kept a game and Kirilenko was broken after committing a series of double faults.
Kirilenko said she wasn’t spooked by the sudden change of her opponent and managed to regain herself in the third set, when she made her opponent run hard by firing shots deep along the sidelines. “It was a little bit difficult, of course, because I thought I was going to finish the match and it went to 5-4,” she said of the second set, which she eventually lost.
“But I tried to forget about it,” she said. “I don’t know why I did the double faults. I think it just happened, you know,” she added.
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