TENNIS EASTBOURNE – Victoria Azarenka, Jelena Jankovic and Sara Errani all faced unexpected losses, while the second seed, Petra Kvitova, who was on the verge of another against Lucie Safarova too. From Eastbourne, Giulio Gasparin
Camila Giorgi in the press conference after her win over Victoria Azarenka
Another day of big surprises at the Aegon Internationals of Eastbourne as three of the four seeds who played today were forced to leave earlier than expected.
Victoria Azarenka, Jelena Jankovic and Sara Errani all faced unexpected losses, while the second seed, Petra Kvitova, who was on the verge of another against Lucie Safarova too.
The most shocking of the upsets happened to Azarenka, who fell in a epic three setter to Camila Giorgi 4-6 6-3 7-5.
The former world number one, at her comeback from an ankle injury, looked quite fit and her game was probably better than most people expected, but the match always seemed to be depending on the shots of the Italian.
Giorgi, who has now won all her three matches against top 10 opponents this season, played as usual a very aggressive match, dictating most of the rallies starting from both the serve and the return.
When she was broke to love at the first try to serve for the match, it seemed that Azarenka could take it, but the Italian fought back and after an endless eleventh game, Giorgi broke once again and this time she served it out.
Definitely less surprising were the departures of Jankovic and Errani, who both have appalling records on grass, but if the Serb lost to a good grass player like Madison Keys, the loss of the French Open quarter-finalist to Lauren Davis was more unexpected.
The Italian had a 5-2 lead in the first set, but suffered the comeback of the young American, who full of confidence took full control of the second set and finally closed the match 7-6(5) 6-2.
Kvitova started her match with great confidence, mostly because she had never lost to Safarova in all three previous encounters.
It all seemed to go according to plans until she went serving for the match in the second set and then she suffered the return of her compatriot, who forced the match to a third.
Both players did not play their best tennis by far and the quality was pretty low. Kvitova had a chance to serve for the match again, but Safarova broke back with a netcord winner.
The second seed then saw the defeat very close as Safarova went 4-2 up in the tiebreak, but then managed to turn it around and win.
She will face Varvara Lepchenko in the second round.
Great impression was given by Flavia Pennetta, who won her first match of the season on grass against Su-Wei Hsieh with a double 6-3, which could have been even easier, given the game produced.
Pennetta will face Heather Watson, who needed a very gutsy performance to overcome Tsvetlana Pironkova 3-6 7-5 6-2 in the last match of the day.
