Tennis: Madrid Open Results Round Up

the American booked her place to the next round of the Mutua Madrid Open after brushing Elena Vesnina aside with ease (3-6, 1-6) and will now face Pavlyuchenkova.

Serena Williams Now Knows what it takes to win on the Caja Mágica’s blue clay courts. She kicked off today’s proceedings in the Manolo Santana Centre Stadium by beating Elena Vesina 3-6, 1-6 in the first round.After taking just one hour and nine minutes to secure her place in the second round, where she will face Russia’s Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, the American met with the press to give her opinion on the blue surface. “I’m feeling good but I wasn’t thrilled. It’s just the first round. I am a competitor and I want to do my best that I can do every time I step out there, whether that’s playing well and losing, at least I know I can improve from that”.With last month’s victory in Charleston still fresh in her mind, Williams put the Mutua Madrid Open in perspective, “I just want to go out there and do the best I can every time and do the right things and hopefully I do the right things, the right results will come”. With the way the draw is set up a possibility exists that she could meet Caroline Wozniacki in the third round of the competition and either Sharapova, Jankovic or Carla Suárez in the quarterfinals. Asked if she would have preferred to have played a tougher opponent than Vesnina she responded, “No, it doesn’t matter to me who I play. This is my first tournament in Europe so hopefully I will just keep my good form and just keep going”.Serena’s debut on the Mutua Madrid Open’s Blue Clay left us with the memorable image of her singing along to “Everything I Do” by Bryan Adams as she put away her rackets. “That’s my go-to karaoke song. That’s the first song I always choose when I go to sing in karaoke bars. I have a whole performance to that song so when they played it out there, I was like “Oh my God! This is my karaoke song!” and I just really wanted to mic it at that point.”

The two main favourites to win the Mutua Madrid Open title, Victoria Azarenka and Maria Sharapova, got their campaigns off to winning starts, although with very different experiences on the courts.Azarenka had to dig far deeper than was predicted to defeat Kuznetsova. The leader of the WTA rankings fought her way into an early lead, but Kuznetsova turned the game around and forced a tie-break, which Azarenka won. Last year’s runner-up stepped up her game in the second set, and in the end closed out the game with a 7-6, 6-4 final score against an impressive Kuznetsova.Sharapova, on the other hand, barely had to break a sweat in her first-round match against Begu. The Russian thumped her rival 6-0 in the first set, and was also in complete control of the second which she eventually won 6-3. She faces Klara Zakopalova next. However, the surprise of the day was the defeat of Roland Garros champion Francesca Schiavone, who lost to American Varvara Lepchenko in three sets.Caroline Wozniacki got her Mutua Madrid Open campaign off to a winning start despite twisting her ankle during the first set when she was leading 3-2 against Kazakh Ksenia Pervak. After receiving medical attention, she came back on with a bandaged ankle and eventually took the first set after a tight, 9-7 tie-break. In the second set, Pervak took advantage of the fact that Wozniacki wasn’t at 100% and forced a third set. Wozniacki showed her experience, however, winning 6-4 to go through to the second round, where she will meet Mona Barthel, who saw off fellow German Julia Goerges.Fourth seed Agnieszka Radwanska convincingly beat Spain’s Lara Arruabarrena 6-3, 6-1. Lourdes Domínguez made it through a difficult encounter with Romania’s Monica Niculescu, who, after losing the first set 0-6, recovered quickly to complicate matters for Domínguez. The Spaniard had a match point on her serve with the second set reading 3-5 in her favour, but Niculescu managed to break it and the match went to a tie-break where it settled into another tight stalemate. Domínguez eventually won 6-8, however, and must now face Petra Cetkovska, who defeated tenth-seed Vera Zvonareva. Twelfth-seed Angelique Kerber eliminated qualifier from the previous round Johanna Larsson (6-1, 6-4) and will now meet Venus Williams.It took Nadia Petrova three sets and a comeback to knock out American Vania King 4-6, 6-3, 6-1. She will now meet the winner of the match between Mathilde Johansson and Ana Ivanovic. Yanina Wickmayer and Shahar Peer came away with two-set victories from their encounters with Jarmila Gajdosova and Polona Hercog.