Plucky Heather fights back from the brink to stun Pervak and reach third round
By MIKE DICKSON
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Heather Watson threw herself, footballer-style, into her adoring crowd of supporters after pulling off another stunning comeback win to demonstrate that she is the woman who never gives up.
The 20-year-old from Guernsey made the third round of the Australian Open after saving three match points against Kazakhstan’s Ksenia Pervak, winning 4-6 7-6 6-2 in a shade over three hours as the temperatures nudged into the eighties.
With the crowd chanting her name she finally served out the match against a tricky opponent, having diced with disaster in the tiebreaker when she went 3-6 down in the tiebreak.
Pure delight: Heather Watson produced a staggering comeback to bear Ksenia Pervak
She now faces a much tougher task against Agnieszka Radwanska of Poland, the classy No 4 seed who gave her a real whacking at the same stage of Wimbledon last summer.
After the match Watson said: 'It felt wonderful to win, I didn’t start well in the wind and I couldn’t find my serve, and in the second set I just stuck in there and kept fighting. I was so tired in the second, the most tired I was in the match.
'I didn’t actually play a good tiebreak but at match point down I just decided that she was going to have to win it, I wasn’t giving it away, so I made sure I ran down every single ball.
'The crowd was unbelievable, they really helped and at the end I told them at the end ‘I couldn’t have done it without you’. I started cramping in the third set and was just hitting the ball, maybe I’m putting too much pressure on myself against lower ranked opponents.'
Smiles better: Watson talks to the press after her victory
Watson is a quick learner in addition to being a supreme scrapper of the kind of quality that is difficult to coach. All three match points involved long exchanges from the baseline in which she refused to yield and drew errors from her left-handed opponent.
Impressively, she managed to put behind her a horrendous missed volley at 3-4 that handed the initiative to Pervak. As in the first round there were long spells when the British No 1 was not at her best, but she somehow managed to overcome that by refusing to lie down.
She knew she would be assured of decent support as she made her way out to the packed Court Eight where the trams rumble past, a good contingent of British fans in the crowd.
Outdone: Pervak looked to be in control of the match but was rocked by Watson's recovery
The same player beat her in the junior event quarter finals three years ago before going on to beat Laura Robson in the final. Robson plays tomorrow in the second night match on the Rod Laver Arena versus Petra Kvitova, while Andy Murray’s second round is scheduled for the full heat of the day on the secondary Hisense Arena.
Pervak, a Berlin-based Russian who has joined a near exodus to play for Kazakhstan for training and financial incentives, looked a mess in her black shorts and red singlet but she possesses a tidy game that is tough to break down.
While ranked at 82, 32 places below Watson, she is better than that and had more tennis coming into the match as she qualified for the WTA event in Brisbane at the start of the year and went on to reach the quarter finals.
Pervak’s winners were greeted with total silence and there were plenty of them at the start as she reeled off the first seven points en route to going 2-0 up.
Marching on: British star Watson has carried her fine recent form into Melbourne
In what proved to be something of a pattern in the match Watson immediately came back to level, as Pervak’s metronomic length and accuracy began to falter. The Kazakh/Russian’s forehand is her stronger suit and the Channel Islander tried to concentrate on pressuring it, not always with success due to the waywardness of her forehand, which had also been a feature of the first round versus Alexandra Cadantu.
It all came two by two, Pervak winning the next pair of games, Watson the next pair and then Pervak the pair after that to clinch the set in 45 minutes, with the British number one’s unforced error count hitting 20.
When Watson moved towards being broken at the start of the second with more errors she threw her racket down in anguish, but again pulled level from 0-2. Then she she finally managed to get ahead with the help of two aces as she stepped up her aggression and also started trying to come into the net.
Eventually she got ahead for 5-4 but missed a match point against the Pervak serve. Then came the drama of the tiebreak, when Watson appeared to blow when, at 3-4 down, she missed a simple putaway high volley by so much that it barely landed in the court.
By royal command: Watson was cheered on by a passionate crowd in Melbourne
All three match points that came at 6-3 involved long rallies and in every single one Pervak blinked first and missed. Watson missed another set point with a netted forehand at 7-6 but then finally clinched it when a couple of forehands from her opponent went wide then long.
Pervak then took her second toilet break of the match (as if!) but it did not appear to do her much good. You suspected that Watson’s superior natural athleticism and fitness would be a major factor with two hours 22 minutes already on the clock and that proved to be the case.
The 20-year-old from Guernsey took the first four games and even the forehand was now being fired with laser-like precision against the heftier and tiring Pervak. With her private Barmy Army chanting her name she served it out with ease, making light of 65 unforced errors.
After Wimbledon it will be the second time she is in the third round of a Grand Slam, although getting further will be a tall order, even for one of her phenomenal determination.
Meanwhile, Laura Robson could not follow up her singles win yesterday with victory in the doubles as she and Timea Babos made a first-round exit.
The Hungarian/British combination were beaten 6-2 6-4 by Russia's Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova and Czech Lucie Safarova.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/tennis/article-2263175/Australian-Open-2013-Heather-Watson-beats-Ksenia-Pervak.html#ixzz2I8QhVmGM
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