A Pair Of Italian Winners On Wednesday
by Priya Prasad
The weather in Palermo continued to become a little less brutal for
the players, and the humidity saw a drop today although the sun
continued to extend its rays with incredible generosity. Not that
Maria Elena Camerin got the chance to add any colour to her
perfectly bronzed skin. The pair was off the court in 55 minutes,
Gala Leon Garcia dropping only 1 game to win 6-0 6-1. For the
Italian, it was home for a couple of days and then off to France to
join Giulia Casoni, Adriana Serra-Zanetti and Roberta Vinci to form
the Italian Fed Cup team.
Asa Carlsson also had an easy match against Rossana de Los
Rios, looking calm and confident in a 6-2 6-3 win. The Swede had
been walking around the grounds, watching a couple of matches here
and there and moving silently through the crowds with a friend of
hers, in stark contrast to the Italians, Spaniards and Russians.
Nearly three hours had been allowed for Francesca Schiavone's match
against Ludmila Cervanova, and the allocation had been just
right. It was a drama-filled match which Cervanova was fortunate to not
find herself paying a fine after. The Slovakian had lost the first set
6-3, but was determined not to let the extremely partisan crowd get
their satisfaction. Serving for the set at 5-3, she hit was she
thought was an ace, and went to her chair to put everything behind
her and concentrate on the third set. Francesca didn't like the call
and asked for a second opinion, at which point the "ace" was deemed a
fault. Understandably distressed, Ludmila argued the point
extensively, and when the chair umpire failed to reverse her
decision, had a few choice words for her. Sure enough, a warning was
given, of which Ludmila questioned the reason. When told that she had
used inappropriate words in English, she denied it, much to the
amusement of the entire crowd that had heard everything.
From then on, the crowd became even more partisan, cheering
Francesca's points a little more loudly. Justly enough, Cervanova got the
next game to even the match up at 1 set apiece. The third set however
was very up-and-down. Francesca, displaying enviable fitness and still
bouncing around on her feet to get herself going, became very charged up,
and started to play an fully aggressive game. On the other side, Ludmila
interestingly displayed an I-wanna-get-the-hell-outta-here attitude one
point and a there-take-that attitude the next, much to the frustration
of her coach.
It seemed that Ludmila would get motivated when she fell behind, and
the minute she evened up the score, would simply throw it away in the
blink of an eye, whether it be a lazily (or nonchalantly) attempted
drop shot that lands in the bottom of the net or not even attempting
to run after a wide-angled shot. She fought hard to save the match,
evening it up at 5-all, but had a constant black cloud hovering over
her, and even her coach had to shake his head in puzzlement. Having
worked so hard for the last 2 ½ hours, no one but her knows why she
threw the next 8 of the 9 points away, and sent Francesca Schiavone
into the quarterfinals, where she will meet dark-horse Asa Carlsson.
In the final match of the day, Tathiana Garbin became the
second Italian to make it into the quarters against Virginia
Ruano-Pascual, winning by a comfortable margin but looking very
vulnerable on court. Virginia started the match by throwing
everything at the Italian's backhand, pressuring the weaker wing and
having much success, even getting the early break. The fifth seed
managed to put more into her backhands tentatively, top-spinning her
single-handed backhands more instead of constantly slicing and merely
blocking them back as she tended to do earlier this year, and despite
coming up with quite a number of mis-hits, didn't let that discourage
her. Gala Leon Garcia watched intently as her quarterfinal opponent
came back from a bad start to both sets to take the match 6-3 6-3,
and will surely take the same approach as her countrywoman.
In doubles action for the day, second seeds Ana Isabella Medina
Garrigues and Maria Jose Martinez struggled against qualifiers
Maret Ani and Laura Dell'Angelo, but eventually came through
6-4 7-6(4). Maria Emilia Salerni continued to struggle, and made too
many errors in her match with Alexandra Fusai against lucky
losers Tatiana Kovalchuk and Maria Geznenge, who took the
fourth seeds out of the tournament. The score: 7-6(2) 2-6 6-2, a
pattern that is becoming a little too familiar for the Argentine.
In the other matches, Asa Carlsson and Sylvia Plischke moved past
Cristina Torrens Valero 6-4 7-5 to move into the quarterfinals, Eleni
Daniilidou and Caroline Dhenin scored an upset over Sandra Nacuk and
Tatiana Poutchek winning 6-1 2-6 6-2 (will meet the top seeds Garbin
and Husarova next), and Emmauelle Gagliardi and Gala Leon Garcia
defeated Evgenia Koulikovskaya and Nadejda Ostrovskaya to set a date
against second seeds Medina Garrigues and Martinez.
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http://tennis-ontheline.com/01pal05.htm © 2025
Last updated 26 September 2015
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