Uberoi loses to top seed Bychkova in first round
Oct 6th, 2005

Shikha Uberoi gave it her best shot but it wasn't good enough against top seed Ekaterina Bychkova in the Tashkent Open here today.

She lost 6-3, 6-4 in a first-round match which lasted 90 minutes.

Uberoi had flown in after the doubles final at Guangzhou only yesterday and apart from being travel weary she said she had been sick for the past two weeks.

“I wasn't there physically and mentally today,” she said. “I had an asthma attack in Guangzhou and then I had diahorrea. It was okay there because I was playing doubles and I was playing at night,” she said.

Still, she played an aggressive game. “I'm a naturally aggressive player,” she said “and if I see a short ball I have to go for it. There were so many today and I wasn't making it. I felt totally drained at the end of the first set and it was tough going in the second.”

Bychkova who had to wait three days for her first match of the tournament said the waiting didn't help at all.

“She's a real serious opponent”, she said of Uberoi, to whom she had lost earlier this year. “I had to take her seriously. But neither of us were at our best today. Maybe I was a bit luckier.”

SERRA ZANETTI DOES IT AGAIN

Lightning sometimes does strike in the same place twice. No 3 seed Antonella Serra Zanetti proved it at the Tashkent Open today, defeating local star Iroda Tulyaganova in the second round, just as she had done last year. Serra Zanetti won 6-4, 2-6, 6-1.

But local interest in the tournament was kept alive by wildcard Akgul Amanmuradova, who defeated Russian Galina Voskoboeva 6-4, 6-4 in her second-round match earlier in the day.

Evgeniya Rodina of Russia, the tournament's second wildcard, made it a memorable day for the underdogs by defeating Melinda Czink of Hungary 7-6 (2), 6-0 in the day's last singles match.

No 5 Michaella Krajicek, however, took her appointed place in the quarter-finals with a 6-3, 3-6, 6-2 over Barbara Strycova of the Czech Republic.

There were six first-round matches in the day and three of seeds featured, No 1 Ekaterina Bychkova, No 4 Emma Laine and No 7 Maria Elena Camerin, won. But No 8 seed Mara Santangelo of Italy was knocked out in three sets by Israel's Tzipora Obziler.

After having played fairly impressively in her last two matches, the final qualifying round and the first round, Tulyaganova would have considered her chances bright against Serra Zanetti. But it turned out to be one of “those” days for her.

Said Tulyaganova after the one hour, 50-minute match: “The whole match depended on how I played. She (Serra Zanetti) didn't do much. I was making all the mistakes.”

Serra Zanetti agreed: “She's very aggressive. When she's hitting winners, she's very dangerous. But she was making a lot of mistakes today. I played my game, making every ball. I also tried to move her around because she wasn't moving too well.”

The key to the match could well have been how the two players returned serve. Tulyaganova gave Serra Zanetti several free points, trying to overhit the Italian's slow-paced deliveries. Serra Zanetti, however, rarely missed a return. And with Tulyaganova far from her best serving form, she was constantly struggling.

Akgul Amanmuradova played big-serving and big-hitting Russian Voskoboeva in a match featuring perhaps the tournament's two tallest players. Amanmuradova was not as steady as when she knocked out No 2 seed Alona Bondarenko in the first round.

“I was very tight found it tough to get a rhythm” she said after she closed out the match on her second matchpoint.

The left-handed Czink was as surprised by her result against Rodina as were the spectators. “She played well and I have no excuses,” a dejected Czink said of her 16-year-old opponent. “But if I had played even 60 per cent of my game, I would have won 6-2, 6-2.”

Michaella Krajicek, the No 5 seed, also complained of being unable to find a rhythm after defeating 19-year-old Strycova, her second opponent from the Czech Republic in as many days.

“I was serving much better (than I did in my first match) but I made a lot of mistakes and I am not happy with the way I played,” she said later.

Her worst game was when, after being 3-1 up, she allowed Strycova to break her back in the fifth game of the third set. But then suddenly she rediscovered her form and won the next three games for the match.

In the only upset in the first-round matches, Santanagelo had two matchpoints at 5-4 in the third set, a game which went to five deuces and in which she called for the tournament referee, disputing a ruling by the umpire.

She called for the trainer after that game, complaining of cramps. But her chance was gone and Oblizer, the steadier of the two players on the day, emerged a 7-6 (1), 3-6, 7-5 winner.

Top seed Ekaterina Bychkova beat India's Shikha Uberoi 6-3, 6-4. Bychkova had to wait till the third day of the tournament for her first match as Uberoi had to fly in from playing in the doubles final at Guangzhou.

“All the waiting doesn't help” said Bychkova later. “Neither of us played our best.”

Uberoi would certainly agree with that. Apart from being travel weary, she said she's been sick the last two weeks and “wasn't there physically and mentally.”

No 4 seed Laine needed just over 70 minutes to beat Anastassia Yakimova of Belarus 6-2, 6-1 while No 7 seed Maria Elena Camerin defeated US-based Romanian Edina Gallovits 6-2, 0-6, 6-1.

Gallovits hit her right ankle with her racket in the opening game of the third set and asked for the trainer. She resumed playing but lost the rhythm she had found in the second set and Camerin, who has dropped 25 places in the rankings this week, went through.

Emanuelle Gagliardi of Switzerland also needed three sets to win first-round match against Yuliana Fedak of Ukraine. Gagliardi won the battle of two hard-hitting players 7-6 (5), 4-6, 6-2.

For more results, Click here