Chile's Fernando Gonzalez gets revenge on Dudi Sela for Davis Cup defeat.
By ALLON SINAIdudi sela ecstasy 224 88(photo credit: AP)
For the first 45 minutes of her match against Serena Williams on Wednesday Tzipi Obziler matched the former world No. 1 shot for shot.
But over the following half hour, the eight-time Grand Slam winner blitzed the 34-year-old Israeli on her way to a 7-5, 6-0 win in the second round of the Bangalore Open.
Obziler (117 in the world) and Williams (11) split the first 10 games of Wednesday's match, each breaking serve twice.
In the 11th game of the first set Obziler squandered what would prove to be a crucial break point as Williams went on to hold serve and broke to love in the subsequent game to clinch the first set.
The second set was far more straightforward for the American, who broke her opponents serve three times to win her first match since losing in the quarterfinals of the Australian Open six weeks ago.
"I did not feel 100 percent," said Williams, blaming it on the long layoff. It was her first game of the tournament after receiving a bye in the first round.
"I made too many errors today," sahe said, adding that some line calls had not helped. "There were a lot of bad calls out there."
Fourth seed Patty Schnyder of Switzerland had to come from a set down to defeat Aiko Nakamura of Japan.
The world No. 12, who lost the first set tie-break rather tamely, came back strongly to win 6-7 (1), 6-4, 6-2 in a match that lasted 1 hour 57 minutes.
"A win is a win. I was not comfortable for the first hour or so, but I kept firing myself up," said Schnyder.
In other second-round matches, Akgul Amanmuradova of Uzbekistan overcame Agnes Szavay of Hungary 4-6, 7-6 (4), 6-4, and Anastasia Rodionova of Russia beat Austria's Sybille Bammer 7-6 (5), 6-2.
Meanwhile, Fernando Gonzalez (13) avenged last years Davis Cup defeat to Dudi Sela (63) late Tuesday night, defeating the Israeli 6-2, 7-6 (2) in the first round of the Tennis Channel Open Cup in Las Vegas.
Gonzalez was a tad rusty in his first match since he won his Chile home title a month ago.
The first three games were all service breaks before Gonzalez finished on top, and he had to rally from 2-0 down in the second to finish off Sela in the tiebreaker.
"I lost in five hours in the Davis Cup in Tel Aviv last year and wanted to forget that," Gonzalez said.
"Today I played really well and took advantage of his serves."
Next up for Gonzalez will be Evgeny Korolev of Russia, a semifinalist last year.
Third-seeded Marcos Baghdatis of Cyprus overcame a slow start to win his first round match, against American Vincent Spadea 7-6 (5), 6-1.
AP contributed to this report
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