{"id":8968,"date":"2014-06-12T08:03:28","date_gmt":"2014-06-12T00:03:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/?p=8968"},"modified":"2014-06-12T08:03:28","modified_gmt":"2014-06-12T00:03:28","slug":"stosur-vs-dellacqua-in-birmingham","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/news\/2014\/06\/12\/stosur-vs-dellacqua-in-birmingham","title":{"rendered":"Stosur vs Dellacqua in Birmingham"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-8969\" alt=\"Stosur-Birmingham-700x450\" src=\"http:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/files\/2014\/06\/Stosur-Birmingham-700x450.jpg\" width=\"410\" height=\"264\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Sam Stosur has kicked off her grasscourt season on the best possible note with a dominant victory over Christina McHale at the AEGON Classic in Birmingham.<\/p>\n<p>Stosur, seeded second at the WTA Premier event, beat the American 6-1 6-3 in just one hour and five minutes on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>She will next face compatriot Casey Dellacqua, who won her second straight match at the Edgbaston Priory Club to take her place in the last 16.<\/p>\n<p>Dellacqua accounted for another American, Varvara Lepchenko, 6-4 6-3 to equal her career-best result in Birmingham.<\/p>\n<p>Stosur, meanwhile, was in imperious form against the former world No.24 McHale, slamming eight aces to just one double fault and winning almost 80 per cent of points behind her first serve.<\/p>\n<p>Stosur and Dellacqua, Australia\u2019s top two ranked players and the country\u2019s leading Fed Cup representatives, will meet for the first time on the WTA Tour.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s a remarkable stat given both have enjoyed long careers at the elite level; they did meet twice on the Australian Pro Tour \u2013 in 2002 and 2003 \u2013 with Dellacqua winning both encounters.<\/p>\n<p>The match guarantees one Australian will progress to the quarterfinals of the Wimbledon tune-up for the first time since Alicia Molik in 2004.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sam Stosur has kicked off her grasscourt season on the best possible note with a dominant victory over Christina McHale at the AEGON Classic in Birmingham. Stosur, seeded second at the WTA Premier event, beat the American 6-1 6-3 in just one hour and five minutes on Wednesday. She will next face compatriot Casey Dellacqua, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5894,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5894"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8968"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8968\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}