Baltacha and Keothavong in first round Tennis action

March 10th, 2010 / Lee A Jackson

WTA Indian Wells Tennis. Britain’s Elena Baltacha has won through her qualification matches, to reach the first round of the Main Draw of the BNP Paribas Open, at Indian Wells Tennis Garden, California. Baltacha beat 20th qualifying seed Ekaterina Bychkova 6-3 6-4 to reach the main draw, to continue her fine form this season. The British tennis star is ranked 64th in the world, and now she is up against Alex Glatch from the USA, who is a wild card entrant for the tournament. If she wins through that, then she will face 7th seed Li Na from China in the second round. Most of the seeded players have received byes through to the second, which is where the real action will start. The first round of the Indian Wells Tournament is the chance for a lot of the qualifiers and lower ranked players to have their day, trying to win through to get a big day against one of the world stars in the second round.

Baltacha is in the bottom half of the draw, and in her quarter, she could run into Maria Sharapova again, who beat the British players recently in the quarter finals at Memphis. Baltacha also has 18th seed Jie Zheng and Anabel Madina Garrigues (29th) in her quarter. Britain also has Anne Keothavong in the bottom half of the draw, and she goes up against Russian Anna Chakvetadze in the first round. Keothavong has been getting back into the swing of things after a big injury problem last year, and has reached the quarter final and semi final of her two tournaments in 2010. World Number 3 Svetlana Kuznetsova is the top seed for the tournament, with Caroline Wozniakci and Victoria Azarenka, second and third seeds respectively.

March 11th
Elena Baltacha to win: 4/1 at BetFred
Alexa Glatch to win: 12/5 at Bwin

Anna Chakvetadze to win: 4/7 at SkyBet
Anne Keothavong to win: 6/4 at Boylesports

WTA Indian Wells Outright
Justine Henin: 10/3 at Extrabet
Kim Clijsters: 9/2 at Ladbrokes
Victoria Azarenka: 9/2 at Ladbrokes
Elena Dementieva: 12/1 at Boylesports
Maria Sharapova: 14/1 at Boylesports