A day after upsetting #15 Eugenie Bouchard in the first round Bethanie Mattek-Sands faced Monica Niculescu as the higher seeded player in the second round but couldn’t deliver another top performance. Mattek-Sands struggled to get her serve in with a 51% first serve %. Of those that did get in on the first serve she won less than half (47%) and overall won just 39% of points on her serve. So it was no surprise that she was broke 10 times in 13 service games including on all five of her service games in the third set. She fought back hard on Niculescu’s serve breaking her seven times in 12 service games. Niculescu was also underwater winning just 45% of points on her serve. In the end the woes on her own serve were too much to overcome and Mattek-Sands lost 6-1, 3-6, 6-3.
The other American in action was Venus Williams who was making an upset bid against #3 Petra Kvitova. After dropping set one 6-2 Williams fought back with a great 6-2 win in set two. The 3rd set was back and forth with Williams up a break at 4-1 before Kvitova broke her twice in a row making it 5-4 and giving her a chance to serve for the match. Williams was able to break Kvitova with the pressure on and the set went to a tiebreaker. The extremely tight tiebreaker went 16 points before Kvitova pulled off the 9-7 win to avoid the Williams upset bid. Both players struggled with their serve with each being broken six times on 14 service games. Kvitova won six more points, 114 to 108 as this one was extremely close. While it’s a disappointment that Williams couldn’t get the win here it is a good sign that she played toe-to-toe with one of the ten best in the world again. Hopefully this is a sign of how the rest of the year will be playing out.
The Results
This is the results for each American. Green means they won, red means they lost.
Click to expand.
Sloane Stephens was the only one who wasn’t able to defend their point total from this event last year.
Upcoming Schedule
We stay in the Middle East next week for the Dubai Tennis Championship, a WTA Premier tournament. There will be 28 players in the tournament and no Americans are seeded. Venus Williams is confirmed as one of three wild card for the event and Sloane Stephens is in the field. Qualifying will start Saturday with four spots available with the main event starting on Monday.
