Dubai: Anastasia Myskina, the 2004 French Open champion, continued her bid to rehabilitate herself as a major title contender by reaching the second round of the $1 million Dubai Open on Monday.
The sixth-seeded Russian, who suffered from exhaustion, shoulder injury and personal problems last year, raised hopes of her third decent run in a row with a 6-3, 6-7 (7/9), 6-1 over Zheng Jie.
Myskina reached the fourth round of the Australian Open and the semi-final of the Pan Pacific Open in Tokyo, and now overwhelmed the highest ranking Chinese player with her forceful service returns, and ability to swing her ground stroke attacks about.
"Everything is getting better - everything my life, my shoulder. I'm more happy right now," she said.
"I want to play now. I want to do my best. Last year I didn't want to play any more. I was stepping on the court thinking when am I going to get off. Now it's different."
Despite that, it looked for a while as though things might go wrong. Myskina had three break points to go 2-0 up in the second set and was unable to convert them in a game which went to nine deuces.
"I did get a little bit upset when I lost that game," she admitted, and soon she found herself 5-3 down, as her ratio of unforced errors crept up.
But two controversial incidents helped her to get back into the second set.
The first happened as Zheng was serving for the second set at 5-4 and a line judge called a Myskina drive in, when Zheng and the majority of the crowd appeared to think it was out.
The Chinese player dropped her racket, walked up to the umpire, and leant on the net arguing.
The interval lasted three minutes, with the crowd whistling and when Zheng resumed at love-30 she dropped her service game.
There was a sequel on the first point of the tie-breaker when Zheng failed to address the ball properly and ballooned it wide, again thinking Myskina's shot was out.
Again it was called in, but this time after expostulating a loud "What!" she recovered.
Myskina saved two set points at 4-6 and was within two points of the match at 7-7, but Zheng was tenacious, patient and ran a lot of balls down and squeezed out the set when Myskina slewed a forehand wide.
But in the third it was all so different, as Myskina punished Zheng's second serve a lot more and raced to a 5-0 lead.
"It was a little bit difficult to close the match today," she admitted.
"I have been playing indoors and it was different here, and I was a little bit nervous as well. But I'll settle down."
She may need to. Her next opponent could well be the resurgent Martina Hingis, provided the former world No 1 overcomes the Indian super-hero Sania Mirza on Tuesday.
In the other matches on Monday Daniela Hantuchova defeated Li Na of China 3-6, 6-4, 7-6 (7/4) while Vera Douchevina overcame Marion Bartoli 6-3, 6-1.
The day proved to be very bad for the Chinese girls as the third Chinese Zheng Jie was beaten 6-3, 6-7 (7/9), 6-1 by Anastasia Myskina.
Elena Likhovtseva overcame Jelena Jankovic 7-5, 7-5 and Lucie Safarova beat Ai Sugiyama 6-2, 6-3.
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