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| 26 Jun 2001 | |
| The Road to Wimbledon |
On the hottest day of the year in England with temperatures reaching as high as 29 degrees some scorching tennis was on display in Roehampton. After the disastrous showing by the girls seeds on day one, the organisers must have been praying that there wouldn’t be another meltdown, however this wasn’t to be the case.
No.2 seed Ashley Harkleroad (USA) must have been pleasantly surprised when she saw Kaia Kanepi (EST) go out in the first round, as the Estonian had beaten her convincingly in the semi-final at Roland Garros. Moving up into the favourite’s spot, Harkleroad must have fancied her chances to win the tournament, however her match against Salome Devidze (GEO) did not turn out quite as she expected.
Devidze stormed to a 5-2 lead in the first set thanks to some great serving. Harkleroad then seemed to get into her stride to come back to 5-5, subsequently both girls held serve to take the first set to a tie-break. Again thanks to some great serving Devidze stormed into the lead, and when Harkleroad put a backhand down the line wide Devidze took the first set 76.
In the heat of the midday sun the match was dominated by some scorching baseline rallies, but Harkleroad never really seemed to find her range and Devidze broke early in the second set. With Devidze’s serve working so well Harkleroad never seemed able to find the means to break back and Devidze went on to take the match 76 64.
Day two’s other seeded casulties in the girls draw included Maria Jose Argeri, the No.10 seed, Sunitha Rao, the No.11 seed, Su-Wei Hsieh, the No.12 seed and Petra Cetkovska, the No.16 seed.
Claudine Schaul, the No.4 seed, had to fight extremely hard to maintain her position as highest seed left in the draw. Her match against Christina Horiatopolous was by far the longest of the day with Schaul finally outlasting her opponent 10-8 in the third.
The boys seeding is holding up far better than the girls with all but two of the remaining seeds going through to the second round trouble free. Only No.9 seed Lamine Ouahab and No.11 seed Alex Bogdanovic couldn’t stand the heat yesterday and bowed out of the tournament, Ouahab was beaten in three by Matija Zgaga (SLO) and Bogdanovic fell to Teimouraz Gabashvili (RUS) 75 76(4).
With the scorching sun forecast to continue for at least another day, the weather isn’t the only thing that is hotting up!
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