Stanford seeds struggle through

Top three in Stanford forced to battle to get through second round

Last updated: 29th July 2010   Subscribe to RSS Feed

Stanford seeds struggle through

Dementieva: Fightback

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Elena Dementieva recovered from losing the opening set to beat Kimiko Date Krumm in the second round of the Bank Of The West Classic.

The top three seeds all struggled in Stanford, with second seed Dementieva no exception as Date Krumm gave her a big scare.

The Japanese star came into the match on the back of an impressive win over former world number one Dinara Safina and she continued that form as she claimed the first set.

However, Dementieva retained her focus and kept calm and in the end did just enough to claim a 3-6 6-3 6-4 win.

Top seed Samantha Stosur also received a tough workout as she began her campaign with a 6-1 7-5 victory over Christina McHale.

Bye

The Australian received a bye in the first round and her second-round assignment was not looking too much tougher as she raced through the first set in 23 minutes.

But American teenager McHale rallied and stayed with her more experienced opponent to 5-5 in the second, but was broken for 6-5 and could not make the most of four opportunities to level.

"The high ranking feels good," Stosur said. "It was a goal for me to get to No. 10. Once I got to that point, all of a sudden I moved up to No. 5. To have another big jump like that so soon is really pleasing.

"It's not like I have changed anything dramatically overnight. It's just a combination of everything that I have been doing over the past few years and now it's all coming together.

"Once you produce some good results, it instills more belief. But I haven't changed anything in my game. I have still been working on the same things, just getting better at them."

Third seed Agnieszka Radwanska was also made to work hard for a straight-sets win.

She was pushed to a tie-break in the first set by Ukrainian qualifier Olga Savchuk, but prevailed and made light work of the second for a 7-6 (7/4) 6-2 victory.

The day's other match saw seventh seed Yanina Wickmayer beat Dominika Cibulkova 6-1 6-4.

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