Wimbledon - Baltacha blasted off court

Eurosport - Wed, 25 Jun 18:10:00 2008

British number four Elena Baltacha was bundled out of the second round at Wimbledon by China's Jie Zheng 6-2 7-5.

2008 Wimbledon Elena Baltacha second round - 0

The 24-year-old Scot, playing in the second round at the All England Club for the third time, was no match for the more experienced Zheng who dominated from the outset.

Baltacha lost her first four games in windy conditions on Court 2, before the former women's doubles champion Zheng eased to the first set in just 27 minutes.

The Briton did have a chance to serve for the second set at 5-4 after breaking in the ninth game, but she lost her nerve and a back and forth set ultimately went to Zheng.

Baltacha, who ended the match with four double faults, was trying to reach the third round of Wimbledon for the first time since 2002 and only the second time in her career.

Britain did celebrate one victory in the women's doubles draw, however, as Anne Keothavong and Melanie South teamed up to beat Chinese pair Chunmei Ji and Shengnan Sun 7-6 (5) 6-4.

Britain's number one Keothavong was a winner in the first round of the singles on Tuesday.

Amanda Elliott and Katie O'brien, however, fell to Aiko Nakamura and Aravane Rezai 7-5 6-4 in their first round match.

In the men's doubles draw, shock singles victor Chris Eaton and partner Alexander Slabinsky were beaten by top seeded Americans Bob and Mike Bryan 5-7 6-1 6-4.

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  1. She's a fighter but she will never get anywhere in the game because of so many injury and illness problems. You need health and fitness to be able to constantly train and compete and reach your full potential. its typical of british tennis that those we produce who do seem to have talent are not strong enough physical specimins (Chris Bailey- injury problems, midgets Wilkinson, Delgado and Bogdanovic; to some extent not strong enough Henman and now Murray) , or soft in the head (Annabel Croft and Andrew Castle quit early for the soft option of TV work; John Lloyd - almost threw away his early promising career completely, in the end vastly underacheived)

    From stevens.mark81, on Thu 26 Jun 12:32AM
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