CHARLESTON (Reuters) – Second seed Monica Seles struggled to victory in her opening match at the Family Circle Cup on Tuesday, as third seed Serena Williams barely broke into a sweat to advance in straight sets. Seles spent one hour 46 minutes battling fellow American Amy Frazier before closing out the second round match by a 4-6 6-3 6-0 margin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“I was a little bit hesitant in the beginning and couldn’t find my form,” said Seles, who trailed 5-0 in the first set before picking up her game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“But I hung in there and I turned things around.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By contrast, Williams never offered American Jennifer Hopkins an opportunity to turn anything around in her 6-0 6-2 victory that took just 40 minutes to complete.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“I’m satisfied,” Williams said. “I played pretty well out there. It seems like I hit a lot of winners and normally you don’t do that on clay.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Williams was nearly flawless in the first set, dominating Hopkins to the point she only lost six of 30 points played.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the second set, Williams went ahead 3-0 before Hopkins held serve in the fourth and sixth games.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Top-seeded Jennifer Capriati begins the defense of her Charleston title against Slovakia’s Janette Husarova on Wednesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
KOURNIKOVA LOSES<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anna Kournikova tried to prevent Conchita Martinez from posting a 30th birthday victory, but wilted after a tight first set to give the Spaniard a 7-6 6-1 present.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Despite the loss, the Russian player was happy with her performance and believes she is making progress after sitting out most of last year with a stress fracture to her left foot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Today was the best match that I played in the last four tournaments and especially against Conchita,” Kournikova said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“She’s an experienced player on clay. So I’m definitely happy with the progress I’ve made.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Neither player seemed capable of holding serve in the first set as both Kournikova and Martinez swapped breaks for five straight games.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kournikova started the tiebreak on the wrong foot by double faulting on the first point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although the Russian competed in most of the rallies, it was clear that the Spaniard was going to be the tougher competitor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After Kournikova flung a backhand long to lose the last point of the first set, the match was always heading in Martinez’s direction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“It was very important to win that first set,” Martinez said. “I felt we were not playing our best tennis and after I won the opener she seemed to fall away.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
CHARLESTON (Reuters) – Second seed Monica Seles struggled to victory in her opening match at the Family Circle Cup on Tuesday, as third seed Serena Williams barely broke into a sweat to advance in straight sets. Seles spent one hour 46 minutes battling fellow American Amy Frazier before closing out the second round match by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"default","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[60,56],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/monicaselessite.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7763"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/monicaselessite.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/monicaselessite.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monicaselessite.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monicaselessite.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7763"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/monicaselessite.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7763\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/monicaselessite.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monicaselessite.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monicaselessite.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}