Advertisement

Tennis-Lucic-Baroni beats Radwanska for second time this year

March 25 (Reuters) - Polish fifth seed Agnieszka Radwanska was the highest women's casualty at the Miami Open on Saturday, blown away for the second time this year by Croatian Mirjana Lucic-Baroni. Radwanska had no answer to the 26th seed, who rolled to a 6-0 6-3 win in barely an hour. Lucic-Baroni also beat Radwanska at the Australian Open in January, in the second round en route to the semi-finals, where she eventually fell to Serena Williams. "She was playing unbelievable tennis today," Radwanska, speaking about Lucic-Baroni, told the WTA. "She was very solid from the beginning, very aggressive, hitting everything with unbelievable speed. I couldn't do much. "The first set went so quickly, and in the second set I had chances, but I didn't come back and unfortunately I missed the chance to stay in the match. She was just too good today." Another high seed had a fright, number six Garbine Muguruza overcoming a slow start to beat China's Zhang Shuai 4-6 6-2-6-2 in over two hours. "Since I've started the year, I've had a lot of matches like this, and I'm expecting that every time I go on court," Muguruza said. "A win is a win, I don't wish to have matches this tough every day, but I'm very happy with the way I'm facing them.” It was Muguruza's second victory over Zhang in barely a month, after their match in Doha in February that also went three sets. Second seed Karolina Pliskova's match went according to form, the Czech beating Kazak 27th seed Yulia Putintseva 7-5 6-3. But 17th seed Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova was sent packing, beaten 4-6 6-0 6-3 by American Bethanie Mattek-Sands. (Reporting by Andrew Both in Cary, North Carolina; editing by Sudipto Ganguly)