Our World Number one played today in the second round today infront of the new york crowd. Today, she played a qualifier named Tsvetana Pironkova. This was a match that almost worried some fans as Justine fell into some trouble early, but Justine is not the giving up type of person and you have to earn every point when you play her because she will not give you a free point.
In the first set, Justine fell into some trouble as Pironkova broke early and led 3-2. During the changeover, Justine thought it was about time to kick this match into high gear and become more aggressive as she won won the next five games to win the first set 6-3.
After kicking into high gear, Pironkova could not catch up as Justine just continued to roll along playing her game, being aggressive. Justine kept breaking Pironkova and continued to hold her serve as Justine won this set 6-0.
Final score 6-4 6-0 for Justine.
“At the beginning of the match I wasn’t aggressive enough. I wasn’t probably ready to fight hard in the first few games of the match, and it was 4-All. You need to be very careful all the time.” [quoted by Justine]
Like everyone else, and every match, most players go through being nervous before settling into a match. Not uncommon, so Justine was not by any means playing a bad game. If anything, she played a pretty clean match. She had 11 unforced errors to 22 winners while Pironkova had 10 Winners. Justine still struggled with her first serves as she just put in 52% in while her opponent put in 54% . I’m pretty sure it will impove soon as I still feel her shoulder is not fully healthy.
The next match for Justine will be against Russia’s Ekaterina Makarova. Ekaterina had to beat Ai Sugiyama to face Justine in the third round.
