Toray Pan Pacific, Victoria Azarenka & Francesca Schiavone breeze into semis
Eight became four on Thursday at the Toray Pan Pacific Open Women’s competition, with Victoria Azarenka becoming the first contender to confirm her place in the semi final round of the $2-million Sony Ericsson WTA Tour event.
The eighth seeded Victoria defeated Coco Vandeweghe, a qualifier from the United States of America, by winning five games in a row from 1-2 in the opening set and six straight from 0-1 in the following set. The final match score was 6-2, 6-1. Victoria has now gone one round better than in her debut run here back in 2009, where she ended as a quarter finalist.
"I played her in an exhibition match in the summer, so I knew a little bit about her. She has a big serve, plus she had won a lot of matches here, so I knew it would be tough. My game plan worked well today. She started very well in the beginning but I was able to focus and be aggressive and I am really excited to be in my first semi final here in Tokyo”, Victoria said of Coco after her yesterday’s victory in Tokyo.
Next up for Victoria will be the top seed Caroline Wozniacki from Denmark, who advanced into the semi final round of Pan Pacific after her Polish opponent, Agnieszka Radwanska, retired as a result of her injury on Thursday. Agnieszka was seeded number six to win the title in Tokyo.
Coco, only eighteen and ranked number 172 in the world by WTA, was contesting in her second career quarter final match, having made it to the last eight at San Diego earlier in this year. She managed to upset the fourteenth seeded, Aravane Rezai, on her way to her match up with Victoria.
The fifth seeded, Francesca Schiavone, on the other hand took over three hours to defeat Kaia Kanepi from Estonia in the quarter-final match of the Pan Pacific on Thursday.
The French Open winner, who is currently ranked number eight in the world by WTA, had to bounce back from a service break down in the opening two sets before sealing a three setter win over the world number 25 Kaia. The final match score was 7-5, 4-6, 7-5.
Francesca, is going down 1-3 in the opening set, and had to prevent two set points at 4-5 in the tenth game before winning the next three games to grab the set when Kaia smashed a backhand into the net.
The thirty-year old Italian again fell behind in the following set, however, pulled off a timely break during the ninth game, just to see Kaia break back in the next game.
Both of them traded breaks on three occasions in the decisive set to be levelled at 5-5 when Kaia committed a double fault on an advantage point for Francesca in the next game to go down 5-6.
Francesca served out the clash taking a handy lead of 40-15 before forcing Kaia to smash her forehand into the net. She after the match, while commenting on Kaia’s game said that she played quite well throughout the match and she had to really fight hard till the end in order to seal victory and confirm her spot in the next round of the tournament.
"I really tried to take the points. I did not wait for a present. I thought if I want to win it, I have to go to the net, to be aggressive, because she played so good. To make the difference, I had to work a little bit more than she did”, added Francesca after her victory on Thursday.
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