 Photographer: Susan Mullane
Date: 03 Jul 2007 |  Photographer: Susan Mullane
Date: 03 Jul 2007 |  Photographer: Susan Mullane
Date: 03 Jul 2007 |  Photographer: Susan Mullane
Date: 03 Jul 2007 |  Photographer: Susan Mullane
Date: 03 Jul 2007 |  Photographer: Susan Mullane
Date: 03 Jul 2007 |
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| 03 Jul 2007 - Wimbledon - Eleanor Preston |  Related Audio |
| Sweet sixteen for Pavlyuchenkova |
 An Interview with Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova (MP3 format)
 
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Reigning ITF Junior World Champion Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova gave herself the perfect 16th birthday present on a rain-saturated day at Wimbledon – a first round win. Pavlyuchenkova, from Russia, beat Portugal’s Michelle Larcher De Brito, courtesy of a champions’ tiebreaker 4-6, 7-5 10-5.
Tournament organisers were forced to institute the truncated third set scoring system in all junior matches after days of inclement weather put this year’s Wimbledon Championships behind schedule. Some junior matches were even moved from the All England Club to the Southlands Lawn Tennis Club in the hope of clearing some of the backlog. Neither the rain nor a tough first round draw against Larcher De Brito could ruin Pavlyuchenkova’s big day, though.
“I wanted to give a present to myself on my birthday,” said Pavlyuchenkova, who is top seed at Wimbledon. “When I was younger sixteen seemed so old, but now I’ve just turned 16 it doesn’t seem quite so old. I was happy that it was my birthday this morning but it’s not easy because you have to focus. Everyone was sending me birthday messages but I could not even read them until after the match. I just wanted to play well because she played quite well on the grass. She hits strong and the ball bounces fast. I was up in the first set and I didn’t take it and I was down in the second, just through my mistakes, then I started to play better and the score came to me. I thought to myself ‘I can’t lose in the first round of Wimbledon again’ and I was quite confident because I needed to win this match.”
Pavlyuchenkova will take on Arantxa Rus of the Netherlands next, who beat Irina Begu of Romania 6-1, 6-0. Pavlyuchenkova might have won three junior grand slam titles – the last two Australian Opens and last year’s US Open – but she remains unsure of herself on grass and is anything but complacent about the effort it would take to win Wimbledon.
“People think I have an advantage because I’m No.1 or something but she had nothing to lose,” she said of the De Brito win. “Grass is not my favourite surface but what can I do? Everyone feels the same. After I lost in the first round of the seniors I practiced more with my coach and he wants me to feel more comfortable on it. It’s not the same game as on clay or on hard-court, you have to play a bit different and all the time low on your legs, so it’s quite difficult. When I played Daniela Hantuchova in the first round of the women’s tournament she hit it so strong and my legs were really tight and they hurt, but now it’s much better because I’m used to it. I started to like it more.”
In other completed matches, ninth seeded Briton Naomi Cavaday scored one of the day’s more convincing wins by beating Croatia’s Jasmina Tinjic 6-2, 6-1; while Australia’s Jessica Moore was narrowly defeated in a champions’ tiebreaker by Argentina’s Tatiana Bua.
Cavaday’s compatriot Anna Fitzpatrick became another of the day’s winners with a 7-5, 6-4 win over the USA’s Melanie Oudin and will face Belarussian rising star Ksenia Milevskaya in the second round. Fitzpatrick was born in Sheffield, northern England, but trains as part of a squad based at the Monte Carlo Tennis Academy and has decided to return to the juniors in the hope of turning a recent run of good form in ITF women’s events into a junior grand slam title.
Like many of the juniors in action on what has been a wet Wimbledon so far, Fitzpatrick’s finest achievement was in not allowing the frustration of repeated rain delays break her concentration. She did admit that growing up with English weather was definitely an advantage. “Everyone is getting upset about it in the locker room but I don’t know what all the fuss is about,” said Fitzpatrick. “I’m used to it!”
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