Coming from the qualifiers, Carolina Meligeni Alves maintained the momentum in her first match in the main draw of the WTA 125 in Cali and won a great victory. This Tuesday, she faced the North American Caroline Dolehide, seed 5, and won by 2 sets to 1, with two tiebreaks and a final score of 7/6 (7-5), 3/6 and 7 /6 (7-4).
Current 216th in the world, Carol will now face the Ukrainian Valeriya Strakhova, 27 years old and 389th placed on the WTA list, who in her debut knocked out the guest of the house Maria Fernanda Gonzalez in straight sets, scoring a double 6/2. It will be the first time that the Ukrainian and Brazilian will meet on the circuit.
“It was a tough game, fought. It was one of my best mental games, a good victory”, said Carol.
The game started better for the São Paulo player, who lost only two points in the first two games and opened 2/0 right away. But afterwards, she suffered two breaks in a row and saw her rival score 4/2. Carol returned the break when Dolehide served to close out, then lost the serve, but scored another break to make 6/6 and take it to the tiebreak.
In the first tiebreaker of the match, Meligeni again showed recovery power, saw the North American take a 5-3 advantage, but then dominated the points in the final stretch, won four in a row and took the first set.
The second partial had a story similar to the previous one, again with the Brazilian starting with 2/0, to later take two breaks in a row. However, this time Dolehide did not waste the advantage when serving to close.
The decisive set was even, with a break for each side in the first games and a first show of strength by Carol, who saved two crucial break-points in the ninth game. Again, the definition went to the tiebreak and the São Paulo player won, closing the game in the third match-point she had, without facing a single opponent.
In the doubles, Carol and the North American Jamie Loeb were surpassed by the Argentines Maria Carle and Julia Riera, by 5/7 6/4 10-4.
