Ekaterina Makarova stuns Vera Zvonareva in the third round battle – Australian Open 2012
In an all-Russian affair at the Melbourne Park, Australia, the world number seven Vera Zvonareva suffered a humiliating straight sets defeat at the hands of her fellow compatriot, Ekaterina Makarova, in the third round of the Grand Slam Down Under. The 56th ranked Russian took one hour and 43 minutes to conclude victory at 7-6(7), 6-1, halting the seventh seed Zvonareva’s voyage at the Australian Open on Saturday.
Being played at the Margaret Court Arena, the contest witnessed a brilliant exhibition of quality hitting from the unseeded Makarova throughout the match. The former world number two, Zvonareva, posed some real resistance in the opening set and a breath-taking tie-breaker round was seen between the two competitors. She lost all her steam in the next set and could barely hold one serve in the entire set to finish the contest in a dismal fashion.
Makarova continued with her sublime run at the Australian Open to dump one of the hot favourites for winning the title. She was successful against the 25th seed Kaia Kanepi in the second round, defeating her in straight sets as well and carried on her winning impetus to overwhelm Zvonareva on Saturday afternoon. She hammered 27 winners and struck five out of nine break points to take the better of her fellow compatriot in an assertive manner.
A competitive opening set was played by the two aggressive Russians. Zvonareva struck early in second game of the match and held her serve to reach 3-0. A heavy onslaught was launched from the unseeded Makarova, who stung two successive serve breaks to race into a 4-3 lead, followed by another break point conversion from the seventh seed to level the scores back to 4-4. Another trade of break points in the 11th and 12th games dragged the set into a tie-breaker round and after an enthralling battle in the decider, Makarova finally closed out the first set at 7-6(7) to lead 1-0 in the match.
The following set was an all-Makarova show. The unseeded Russian nailed crucial break points in the second and the sixth games to wrap up victory with a breadstick at 6-1, marching into the fourth round of the Grand Slam event.
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