No.10 seed Daniela Hantuchova skipped through to the second round of the Ladies’ Singles with a dominating display over Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova on Court 11.
The Slovak had too much experience and firepower for the up-and-coming Russian teenager, emerging the victor 6-1, 6-0 in just 40 minutes.
Pavlyuchenkova, ranked 311, has twice won the Australian junior title and the US equivalent once, but today was served a brutal reminder of the gulf between her peers and the major league.
The match didn’t really get started until the first game of the second set when she held her nerve long enough to hold serve. But it was to be a temporary reprieve as she lost her next service game to love, conceding the game on a double fault.
Hantuchova came into Wimbledon in good form. She reached the quarter-finals at the warm-up event in Birmingham – a result that restored her to the top 10 after a four-year absence – and the semis at ’s-Hertogenbosch, where she defeated world No.6 Ana Ivanovic (and her doubles partner this week at Wimbledon) along the way.
The match-play certainly told in today’s match as the 2002 Wimbledon quarter-finalist mixed deep groundstrokes and deft drop shots to keep her inexperienced opponent off balance.
“I felt like I was doing everything right today on the court, and tactically I think I played very smart,” Hantuchova said.
“I think, as I’ve been saying the last few weeks, I started to feel really good on grass, and I think I had two very good tournaments, so I was coming in very confident into this one.”
It isn’t always so, but the stats certainly told the story of this match: Hantuchova made 75% of first serves, and won 90% of the points when she did. She won all her net approaches, and 72% of points on return. The 10th seed hit 20 winners and just three unforced errors. With a possible fourth round match against Serena Williams in the offing, she’ll be hoping she can keep it up.
The Slovak is relishing her return to the top echelons of the game. “It means a lot. I mean, it’s a great feeling to be back in the top 10. I know how to appreciate it this time, you know, where before maybe I was taking too many things for granted and didn’t really realise what I was doing. It feels great, but I feel like that’s not my final stop. I want to get much, much further.”
Match Statistics
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