Miami Open
Ana just fell short to reach the last sixteen at the Miami Open as she was narrowly beaten 7-5, 6-4 by world No. 20 Timea Bacsinszky. The Swiss proved to be the in-form player on the Miami soil as she also breezed past world No. 3 Agnieszka Radwanska and world No. 5 Simona Halep in later stages of the tournament.
All of the 32 seeded players received an opening round bye, whereafter Ana was drawn to face the winner of the Brazilian encounter between Beatriz Haddad Maia and Teliana Pereira. It was eventually the latter who wrapped up her first victory of the season to set-up the clash with Ana.
Ana got brilliantly out of the blocks. She immediately showed her attacking intentions and rifled winner after winner in the opening game to break Pereira on the first occasion, before easily consolidating the break on her serve.
Pereira fought herself back into the match and, partly helped by some unforced errors from the former world No. 1’s racket, she managed to restore parity at 2-2.
However, Ana’s domination re-gained the upper hand as the match progressed. The 28-year-old went 5-2 up and pushed the world No. 50 behind the baseline. She was broken once more while trying to seal the first set on her serve, but immediately set it right as she clinched the set one game later.
Now Ana’s game had fully clicked into place, Pereira had few answers to the 28-year-old’s dominant display. The sixteenth seed went a double break up and quickly turned down further resistance from the Brazilian, not dropping a single game in the second set.
It was with the same dominance and flair that Ana started her match against Timea Bacsinszky. She surged into a 3-0 lead and held her advantage until the tenth game, in which she earned three set points. Unfortunately for the Ana, not converting any of them would turn out to become the momentum switch of the match.
Indeed, with Bacsinszky clearing away all three set points, Ana lost her grip over the battle. The Swiss levelled for 5-all, ran away with the first set and dashed into a 5-1 lead in act two, winning eventually eight out of the nine next games.
To her credit, Ana managed to reduce the arrears to 5-4, but it was Bacsinszky who didn’t falter a second time to serve it out and moved into the last-16 stage.
“It was a very intense match, I fought until the end but it wasn't enough.”
Results
R1: BYE
R2: Ana vs. T. Pereira (WTA-50) 6-3, 6-0
R3: Ana vs. T. Bacsinszky (WTA 20) 5-7, 4-6
