Russian fourth seed Elena Dementieva survived an early scare to reach the Australian Open fourth round with a 7-6 (8/6), 6-4 win over unseeded hometown favourite Samantha Stosur today.
Russian fourth seed Elena Dementieva survived an early scare to reach the Australian Open fourth round with a 7-6 (8/6), 6-4 win over unseeded hometown favourite Samantha Stosur today.
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The victory took Dementieva's winning streak this year to 13 and proved lucky for the Russian as a string of Stosur mistakes let her off the hook when she trailed 5-2 in the first set.
While Dementieva advanced to the last 16, the centre court match in front of a fervently pro-Stosur crowd revived questions about the 27-year-old's big-match temperament as she chases her first ever Grand Slam.
She started slowly against an opponent who drew wild cheers every time she scored a point and would have lost the first set had World No 48 Stosur managed to hold serve leading 5-2.
"We had such a great fight," Dementieva said. "Samantha's a great player, she played very solid and it was very tough to win today."
The 27-year-old has followed up the Olympic gold medal she won at last year's Beijing Olympics with a string of victories that have already delivered two titles in 2009, at Auckland and Sydney.
But she has underachieved at Grand Slams for a decade, with losing appearances in the 2004 French and US Open finals the pinnacle of her career in the majors.
Stosur said before the match that she would use the crowd to her advantage and the stands erupted when she fended off a Dementieva break point in the opening game.
But there were groans when she netted a volley with an open court beckoning in the next game, taking the pressure off her opponent's serve.
Dementieva committed her own mistakes as she struggled to find her range with her groundstrokes and Stosur went up a break in the fourth game.
The Russian immediately broke back, only to put Stosur ahead again when she double faulted in the next on break point.
The World No 4 tried to lift but Stosur, buoyed by the crowd, held on to go up 5-2, earning the chance to serve out the set two games later.
The Australian failed to covert her chances, again letting Demenieva off the hook with a double fault and an eagerness to rush the net that and left her vulnerable to her opponent's passing shots.
Dementieva's radar finally began to kick in and she won three games straight then took the set to a tie-break, emerging with an 8-6 win to edge ahead after almost an hour.
Her serve remained suspect in the second set and Stosur broke her twice but her superior court coverage and accurate returns proved the difference.
She failed to covert a match point serving at 5-3 but broke Stosur in the next game to seal the match after 100 minutes.
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