Samantha Stosur has made a sizzling start to her US Open title defence, blasting her way into the second round in an awesome display of power tennis.
Stosur served up her own storm, unleashing 10 aces to sweep past Croatian Petra Martic 6-1 6-1 before violent thunder and lightning in New York forced a two-hour rain delay on day one at Flushing Meadows.
Australia’s seventh seed was the first big gun through to the second round and next faces Romanian qualifier Edina Gallovits-Hall or Swiss Stefanie Voegele for a place in the last 32 at Flushing Meadows.
Fellow Australian Casey Dellacqua is also safely through after beating Ukraine’s Lesia Tsurenko 6-2 6-3, but Stosur’s electric display was undoubtedly the highlight.
In a spectacular opening, Stosur looked on track to record a rare “golden set” as she won the first 19 points of the match, hammering down five aces in the process.
Martic finally was on the board after 11 minutes when Stosur double-faulted.
“I knew at 4-love, 40-love that I hadn’t missed a point and the match had been going pretty quick and obviously in my favour,” Stosur said.
“It did pop into my head for a split second. Then I hit the double-fault and it was erased and I was quickly on with the next point.”
Martic held serve in the sixth game to avoid a bagel before Stosur claimed the first set in 22 minutes.
The world No.7 continued the onslaught in the second, breaking three more times to seal the match in only 51 minutes.
All up, Stosur unleashed 10 aces, clubbed 22 winners to Martic’s seven and committed just 11 unforced errors for the match.
“It was a really good start -happy with the way I played,” Stosur said.
“I thought I served really well. There isn’t really anything that I’d say I have to go out on the practice court and work on.
“It was fantastic, great to get out there again. I felt like I was ready to go.”
After reaching the Texas Open semi-finals last week, Dellacqua continued her impressive run to book a likely second-round date with Chinese ninth seed Li Na.
“I started a little bit nervous because I knew it was a winnable match and I had been playing well, so I didn’t want to go out there and get overwhelmed or put too much pressure on myself,” Dellacqua said.
“I had a really set game plan, I knew her game quite well – a couple of other girls had given me feedback on her game – so I knew what I had to do and had to go out there and execute.
“I didn’t over-play or do anything too fancy. I played solid, did the basics quite well and, yeah, was happy to close it out before the rain came.”
