Anne Keothavong slumps to defeat in Florida

Anne Keothavong missed a decent chance of scoring only her sixth win in eight months when she took a 4-2 lead against Tamira Paszek at the Sony Ericsson Open in Key Biscayne, Florida before losing a little disappointingly by 6-4, 6-2 to the former top-40 Austrian. It seemed as though lack of confidence and ensuing loss of rhythm with her more attacking ground strokes which did for Keothavong, who had been absent from the main tour for seven months with a knee injury. She was 4-2 up, attacking hard, and going well, but as soon as she played a bad game and dropped serve for 4-4 the force left her. Keothavong, the first British player in the top 50 in 16 years only a short time ago, then lost six games in a row and eight games out of ten. Twice she called for her coach, Nigel Sears, to offer the words which might help her summon the consistency she needed. It was a reasonable ploy to help her take stock as the former British No1 had been allowing herself to fret, twice serving double faults on game points. But despite striking some strident ground strokes, saving three break points at 2-4, and earning a break back point for 3-4, Keothavong wellied a big drive volley into the net from a good position and a momentum-changing opportunity was lost. It left her still outside the top 100, having used up four of the eight protected ranking tournaments she is allowed for having suffered a prolonged injury last year. Keothavong said: "My grandmother passed away yesterday and I wasn't really there in the head today. I tried to fight my emotions but tennis didn't seem that important today."