Week 3. Australian Open - 1st round match.

A good warm-up.

As promised, my report of Ana's first round match against Shanay Perry from the USA, which beforehand was titled as: "this should be an easy one".

Ana was up first on Margaret Court Arena, which was pretty crowded for this time of day. Ana appeared in a truly wonderfull new outfit, which suited her perfectly, but I'm not to discuss fashion, so I'll drop that subject!!

Ana got off to a good enough start, keeping her first 2 servicegames with ease and trying to break Perry early on. She had 2 BP's in the 2nd game, but she wasted them. She broke Perry in the 4th game though, leading 3-1, but got a re-break right after.

A very long 6th game, proved to be vital in this first set, Ana had some BP's, Perry had a lot of gamepoints, but eventually Ana broke Perry to lead 4-2. She held her own serve with easy and broke Perry again who didn't seem to believe that she any chance whatsoever against Ana. First set, 6-2, good enough tennis, nothing special to report.

Ana raced to a 5-1 lead in that 2nd set and should have closed it out, but she didn't. As "usual" Ana started to think about what she was doing, which was playing rather good tennis up until that point, but somehow closing the match on her own serve is something scary for Ana. Her ball-toss was suddenly all over the place again, she wasn't being aggressive anymore and she started to make some UE's. Perry made a re-break and even made it 5-3. Thankfully Ana woke up in time and closed out the match 6-3.

All in all it was an average match. It wasn't great from Ana's side, but that wasn't needed against a very mediocre player. Fact is that Ana hates to play against players who have a sliced backhand. She was lured into making an error in the beginning of the first set, but she managed to stay quite patient after that.

That's something that has to be considered as positive. Ana usually rushes when she's given those low sliced backhands (just remember her match against JuJu), but she was really patient after 4 or 5 games and set up some beautiful points, with some good volleying at the net at times.

Conclusion: weird opponent, first match of the tournament, serve% was ok, some good shots, some good dropshots, glad to have won in 2 straight sets I guess. Of course she needs to step it up a bit in her next match against Dulko, but I guess it's only natural that she doesn't play her best tennis in a first round match, so I'm optimistic for her 2nd round match!!!

More to come after her 2nd round match. Cya then!!!