Marni Marches Past Mladenovic
Pictured: Amarni Banks, runner-up at The Shrewsbury Club last year, was a first round winner against Kristina Mladenovic. Picture: Malcolm Couzens.
Amarni Banks, last year’s runner-up, was pleased to be back at The Shrewsbury Club as she got the better of former world number 10 Kristina Mladenovic in the first round of the Lexus W100 Shrewsbury. The British number eight enjoyed a memorable run in Shrewsbury last year, beating a number of higher ranked opponents, before eventually losing in the final to Viktorija Golubic.
Pleased to be back in familiar surroundings, Banks produced an excellent performance to emerge as a 6-1, 6-3 winner against Mladenovic, a quarter-finalist at both the French Open and US Open earlier in her career.
"The support here has been really good,” said Banks, 22, who will face Ukrainian sixth seed Daria Snigur in round two tomorrow. "I’ve seen a few people that I saw last year and they’re all rooting for me, so it’s been very nice.
“I played really well today. I had my game plan and I executed it really well.”
Banks also beat Mladenovic in the first qualifying round at Wimbledon in June: "I kind of knew what she played like, her game style, and I was just happy to get the win today,” she added.
Reflecting on how the last year has been since her W100 Shrewsbury run last year, Banks said: “It’s been good. My ranking’s slowly but surely getting there. I just take it one tournament at a time and try and do my best every tournament, but it’s going well.”
Jodie Burrage, Sonay Kartal, Beth Grey, Hephzibah Oluwadare and Mingge Xu joined Banks in also advancing to the second round.
Burrage, who was ranked as high as 85 in the world last September and has recently returned from injury, was a 6-2, 4-6, 6-3 winner over Swiss player Valentina Ryser.
Burrage will now take on fellow Brit Kartal, this week’s third seed, after she beat Klugman, the 15-year-old who impressed as she reached the quarter-finals in Shrewsbury last year, 6-4, 6-4.
Grey set up a round two match against Heather Watson tomorrow after responding well to losing the opening set to beat Croatian Petra Marcinko 5-7, 6-1, 7-5.
Xu, who impressively progressed to the semi-finals of the US Open girls’ singles in New York last month, was a 6-2, 6-4 winner over Ranah Akua Stoiber, another promising British player.
Oluwadare, through to the main draw as a lucky loser after defeat in the second qualifying round, moved into the last 16 after her opponent, eighth seed Victoria Jimenez Kasintseva from Andorra, was forced to retire in the early stages of the second set.
Oluwadare, 16, led 7-5, 2-0 at the time and will now face Xu, 17, in the second round.
There were also victories today for second seed Oceane Dodin, Marina Bassols Ribera, Nastasja Schunk and Elena Malygina, a 6-4, 6-0 winner over Mona Barthel, the 2011 Shrewsbury champion, and once ranked as high as 23 in the world.
All first round singles matches were completed despite torrential rain throughout the day leading to a delay with the schedule in the DMOS People Arena, while a power cut in the area meant play was briefly suspended on all courts.