ST. PETERSBURG, Russia — Daria Gavrilova followed up her Australian Open fourth-round effort by reaching the second round of the St. Petersburg Ladies Trophy in beating Russian wild card Anna Kalinskaya 6-4, 7-5 on Monday.
The Australian had problems holding serve against Kalinskaya and was a break down in the second set. She will run into another Russian next, third-seeded Svetlana Kuznetsova.
Kiki Bertens of the Netherlands, seeded seventh, fell in the first round against Annika Beck of Germany 7-5, 3-6, 6-4. Beck had problems on her first serve but compensated by winning an impressive 72 per cent of points on her second serve.
Beck’s reward is a second round with Sweden’s Johanna Larsson or Kazakhstan’s Yulia Putintseva.
Russian wild card Natalia Vikhlyantseva, ranked 115th, made up a 70-place ranking deficit to Kazakhstan’s Yaroslava Shvedova in a 6-3, 6-4 win. That sets up a match against eighth-seeded Daria Kasatkina of Russia or last year’s St. Petersburg finalist, Belinda Bencic of Switzerland.
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