Tereza Martincova began her quest for qualification for the Women's Tennis Association's (WTA) tournament's main draw on Monday with a 6-3, 6-3 victory over Great Britain's and Nottingham born Freya Christie.
Chance to shine on home turf
The big story behind this game was always going to be Christie's opportunity to play in front of her home crowd. It was no doubt going to be a special occasion for the 19-year-old who has grown up in the city.
The tournament also gave her the opportunity to make her WTA Tour debut as she competed in Nottingham for the first time last year. She came into this tournament looking to better last year's performance where she was knocked out in the first round.
As for Martincova, she has slightly more experience at 22-years-old and also already has two titles to her name from the ITF tour so far. The Czech's best ever ranking was No. 157 in the world and she was looking to use this tournament to get back to that level.
Czech has too much quality in opening set
Martincova made a storming start to the opening set and caught Christie off guard as she raced into a 3-0 lead. However, with the support of the crowd, Christie fought back and got it back to 3-2 after managing to break the Czech's serve despite firm resistance.
This fightback did not faze Martincova and she won three of the next four games to take the opening set 6-3. Christie did show great character to see out her service game to make it 5-3 but it was not enough to prevent her from falling behind in the match.
Christie left frustrated in second set
The second set began with both players routinely holding their serve. However, Christie began to become frustrated as Martincova broke to go 2-1 up.
Christie responded in the best way possible by breaking back in convincing style. Despite this, she was left frustrated again moments later as her shot went long to allow the Czech to break back again and go 3-2 up.
Christie's frustration from this game was noticeably carried into the next. Martincova took advantage of this and went 4-2 up with a perfect service game. Christie gave herself a mountain to climb as she allowed Martincova to break and go 5-2 up and be within one game of safely going through to the next qualifying round.
She did put up a fight and broke in the next game to make it 5-3 with Martincova missing her first match point, but this was not enough as she had her serve broken again in the final game as the Czech took the set 6-3 and won the match 2-0.
What next for Martincova?
Martincova could face another Brit in the second qualifying round with Eden Silva taking on Deniz Khazaniuk later today.