Tennis: Hantuchova's star still rising
FILDERSTADT, Germany
Daniela Hantuchova, who has just regained her place in the world's top 20
after more than a year and a half, continued her improvement in the 650,000-
dollar WTA tournament.
Hantuchova won the last nine games in a row in a surprisingly one-sided 6-4,
6-0 success against Meghann Shaughnessy, the former top 20 player from the
United States, in the first round.
"I am much more aware of what I am doing on the court these days," the 22-year
-old Slovakian said. "Before I used just to come out swinging but didn't really
know what I was doing, and now I know what to do at certain times. I feel like
my game is right there now."
Hantuchova was wonderfully consistent and varied with her attacking drives, but
also showed that she is far more astute than she used to be in choosing her
moments at coming forward.
This introduced just enough variety to force Shaughnessy to try to take away
the initiative from an increasingly confident-looking opponent, and that
brought an increasing ratio of errors from the American.
It also brought frustration. In the penultimate game, when Shaughnessy was
attempting to put a little more bite on her second serve, she delivered three
double faults, smashing the ball angrily into the roof of the centre court
after the second one.
"I was expecting a difficult match because Meghann is a good player," said
Hantuchova. "So I'm really glad I got on top in the second set. She gets out
of a lot of games because of her serve, but today I felt like I was in control."
The turning point came when Hantuchova, who lost only five points on her
serve in the first set, won a service game emphatically to love to reach
four-all.
That applied pressure to Shaughnessy, who struggled uphill through five
deuces on her next service game, twice having points to reach five-all,
before Hantuchova made the break by winning a backhand-to-backhand exchange.
That changed the mood of the match completely. Hantuchova's game went up agear,
enabling her to produce two or three superbly disguised and brilliantly
accurate drives which brought spontaneous applause even from her coach Nigel
Sears.
It earned Hantuchova a meeting with the seventh-seeded Patty Schnyder, who
holds a 7-4 head-to-head lead between them but whom Hantuchova beat when they
last met two months ago in New Haven.
Earlier two other former top 20 players, Eleni Daniilidou and Karolina Sprem,
came through the qualifying competition to play each other.
The winner will have a second round match with Kim Clijsters, the second-seeded
US Open champion who could become world number one this week if she takes
away Lindsay Davenport's title. - AFP /dt
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