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MELBOURNE - Marina Erakovic came agonisingly close to making the third round of the Australian Open before losing 1-6, 6-3, 7-9 to the Czech Republic's Lucie Safarova yesterday.
The first set raced by in 27 minutes with the New Zealand 20-year-old struggling to find her way as the Czech left-hander used angles on her shots to good effect.
Erakovic battled back in the second set to break her opponent's serve in the fourth game before taking the set 6-3.
The third and final set was a game-for-game dogfight with Erakovic holding a break point on Safarova's serve at 3-3 but not being able to capitalise on it. Each player then continued to hold serve with Erakovic holding off several match points before finally being broken in the 16th game as world No 60 Safarova prevailed after two hours and 16 minutes.
The final set alone took 1h 13m to complete and the end came with Erakovic double-faulting.
Erakovic admitted it would be tough to recover from the loss, especially since she came so close to advancing to the round of 32.
"It's definitely a hard one to lose. You really want to do well at the Aussie Open and when you have a match like this it hurts and it hurts a lot," she said. "It's a tough one to take but I have to take it.
"I don't think there was any one thing to change the match."
Although disappointed, Erakovic quickly found a couple of positives to take from the match to work with in future tournaments.
"Maybe a good point was that even though I stuffed up the first set, I fought back and started playing more aggressive. If I had done that earlier things may been different," she said.
Safarova, 24, showed her extra experience, gleaned from reaching the Australian Open quarter-finals in 2007.
In contrast, this week marked the first time in the main draw in Melbourne for Erakovic, the world No 68, who served at just 55 per cent on her first serves compared with Safarova's 63 per cent.
Erakovic was the first New Zealand woman to make the second round of the Australian Open singles since Claudine Toleafoa in 1991.
She will now turn her attention to the doubles where she is to partner Croatia's Jelena Kostanic Tosic.
The pair reached the quarter-finals of the US Open last year.
- NZPA
