Saturday, March 15, 2014

Penetta upsets Li Na to face Radwanska in the final at Indian Wells


Flavia Pennetta1
Former world number 10 (2009) Flavia Pennetta caused a massive shock in the Semi Finals when she beat top seed Li Na in straight sets. During Pennetta's 76 (7-5) 63 victory, both players struggled with their serves. In the first set there was 8 consecutive breaks of serves en route to the first set tie break. Li Na produced a disappointing 9 doubled faults (of which 8 was in the first set) which also lead to Pennetta winning the set in a close tiebreak. Li did make a positive start in the second set by breaking the Italian to take a early 2-0 lead. This lead was however short lived as last years US Open champion fought back to level it. The deciding moment of the match was when Pennetta broke Li again to move up 5-3 and one game away from her first ever WTA Premier Mandatory final. This was no problem for her as she served it out and took the match on her second match point. This is now Pennetta's third victory over Li Na. The first two was in 2006 at the Gold Coast and 2010 at Sydney.

Meanwhile Agnieszka RadwaƄska enjoyed a 63 64 win over Romania’s Simona Halep. Prior to this match Radwanska has produced encouraging wins over recent Doha finalist Alize Cornet and world number 8 Jelena Jankovic. In the 85 minuet match Radwanska was only broken twice and produced 72% of first serves in. Halep can however still leave Indian Wells feeling very happy as she will be ranked in the top five on Monday for the first time in her career. This will also make her the first Romanian woman in History to reach the top 5 in the WTA rankings.

The final will be the eighth time both players have met. They have already played each other twice this year with each winning a match. Radwanska won 62 62 at the Hopman cup and Pennetta won in Dubai 64 61. A full list of their previous matches are the following:-

Year
Tournament
Nation
Surface
Round
Winner
Score
2007
$100,000 Biella
ITA
Clay
SF
RADWANSKA
6-2 3-6 7-6(2)
2008
Hobart
AUS
Hard
32
PENNETTA
4-6 6-1 2-6
2010
Dubai Open
UAE
Hard
16
RADWANSKA
6-3 6-0
2011
Beijing
CHN
Hard
SF
RADWANSKA
6-2 6-4
2012
Indian Wells
USA
Hard
32
RADWANSKA
6-4 6-2
2014
Dubai Open
UAE
Hard
16
PENNETTA
4-6 1-6
2014
Hopman Cup 2014
AUS
Hard

RADWANSKA
6-2 6-2 
  


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1 comment:

  1. Very nice article and very helpful. Timea Babos will meet Halep in today's game played in Us Open tournament. In their last H2H meeting played at Guangzhou Open, Halep won the match with 2:0. I wonder if Babos prepared us with a surprise today. Based on the past results of the two players, I would expect Halep to perform well during this game and go for a victory. It should be interesting to see if Halep will win by 2 sets difference as her last head to head meeting.

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