Venus Williams overcomes Mirjana Lucic-Baroni in the opening round – Brasil Open 2013
Former world number one, Venus Williams, had an excellent beginning to her Brasil Open campaign by winning her opening contest against the 107th ranked Croatian underdog, Mirjana Lucic-Baroni, on Tuesday. The top seeded
American veteran took 79 minutes to wrap up victory in twin-sets, 6-3, 6-3, to reach the pre-quarter-final rounds of the WTA tournament in Florianopolis, Brazil.
Albeit registering an assertive score line, Venus had to work extremely hard to take down the 30-year-old rival in the contest. Lucic-Baroni posted some solid resistance in both sets but Venus used her tons of experience to manoeuvre
her way through the intense pressure situations of the game. She had defeated the Croatian with double bagels way back in 2002 and her Tuesday’s victory gave her a 2-0 lead over her in the head-to-head series.
The opening set took off with successful serve holds from both players to reach 1-1. Lucic-Baroni drew first blood in the third game, only to be broken in the very next game and falling to 2-2 eventually. Venus went on with her
impetus and nailed her second successive break of serve in the sixth game and propelled the scores to 5-2 after a serve hold in the next game. Lucic-Baroni couldn’t recover from the early damage and have to submit the set to the top seeded American at 3-6.
Venus had a more belligerent approach in the following set and stung three successive break points to rocket away to 5-0 lead in no time. She was about to finish off the contest earlier than expected but Lucic-Baroni made her last
valiant effort to register her comeback in the match. The Croatian underdog cracked two consecutive serve breaks and reduced the deficit to 3-5. However, she couldn’t hold her serve in the ninth game and has to finish the matchup at 3-6.
Lucic-Baroni coughed a total of seven double faults and registered three break points in the entire matchup to finish on the losing side in the end. On the other hand, Venus cashed in six out of 11 break opportunities to clear
the opening hurdle of Brasil Open convincingly.