Svetlana Kuznetsova has been defeated by Angelique Kerber of Germany in the third round of Mutua Madrid Open. Kerber won the match in three sets by 3-6, 6-4, 7-5.
It took Kerber more than a couple of hours to register her second victory over Kuznetsova in 3 matches.
In the post match interview, Kerber said, “In the first set, Svetlana was playing great tennis and it was hard to compete against her. I was really under pressure when the second set began. I decided to take it game by game and tried not to lose my focus.”
“I am happy that I managed to win today, but, I certainly need to start better in my next match. You can’t always recover after losing the first set.”
In the first set, both the players had a steady start. The first five games went with the serve and Kuznetsova was leading by 3-2 when the 5th game ended.
Kuznetsova broke Kerber’s serve in the 6th game and then, enhanced her lead to 5-2 with a serve hold in the next game.
The Russian player just needed to win her next service game to seal the set and she had no difficulty in doing that. She won the opener by 6-3 and put her opponent under tremendous pressure.
In the second set, Kerber again had a poor start. She dropped her serve in the very first game, but, after that, she lifted the standard of her game considerably and broke Kuznetsova’s serve thrice to win the set by 6-4.
In the third and final set, Kerber was looking confident right from the start. She got a breakthrough in the 2nd game to get ahead by 2-0. However, she lost the advantage soon as she was broken back in the very next game. Kuznetsova held her serve in the 4th game to level the scores.
The next seven games went with the serve and the score was 6-5 in the favour of Kerber at the end of the 11th game.
The German player broke Kuznetsova’s serve again in the 12th game and that was the end of the match.
In the next round, Kerber will lock horns with Ana Ivanovic of Serbia.