NEW HAVEN, CT, USA - Two of Russia's best - Elena Dementieva and Nadia Petrova, both former No.3s - played their first matches of the Pilot Pen Tennis at Yale, one cruising and one just managing to scrape by.
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Petrova, the No.8 seed, was the first of the power pair to get the win, rallying from 61 52 down to defeat qualifier Varvara Lepchenko, 16 75 61. From that deficit Petrova kicked into high gear, winning 11 of the last 12 games, and even holding three game points in the only game she lost in that stretch.
Dementieva, seeded No.4, had far less trouble with María José Martínez Sánchez, beating the crafty Spaniard in 53 minutes, 61 62. Martínez Sánchez was playing her first match in over two months, having withdrawn from Wimbledon and all summer events before this one with a right knee injury.
Other winners on Day 1 were Daniela Hantuchova, Sara Errani, Kateryna Bondarenko, Bethanie Mattek-Sands and Dominika Cibulkova.
Check out pics of Elena, Nadia and others in the off-court gallery!
Hantuchova beat Kaia Kanepi, 75 63, in one of the later matches of the day. The two were on serve right until the last game of the first set, when Hantuchova broke at 15; they traded breaks midway through the second set but Hantuchova pulled away from 3-all with three straight games to put the Estonian away.
"I'm very happy the way I played today since the conditions weren't easy - it was windy and it has been raining for some time, all day yesterday, so it was nice to finally be on the court," Hantuchova said after the match. "This week is great practice before going to New York and I felt really good out there today."
Under the lights, Dinara Safina rallied back from a first set blowout and overcame No.3 seed Francesca Schiavone, 16 63 61.
"It just wasn't going my way in the first set and I started to think about our match in Montréal, but after the first set I told myself to be positive and keep playing my game," said Safina, who lost to Schiavone a week ago in straight sets. "The fans were really behind me and their support helped me a lot."
