Victoria Azarenka ends Julia Goerges' winning run at the Mutua Madrid Open
Fourth seeded Belarusian Victoria Azarenka trashed German Julia Goerges in straight sets on Saturday. She registered a 6-4, 6-2 win over the 22-year-old German to reach the final of the 2011 Mutua Madrilena Madrid Open, a clay
court tournament held in Spain.
Ranked fifth in the WTA Premier rankings, Azarenka is in awesome form so far this season. She has won 19 out of her last 21 matches and two which she lost were due to injury which forced her to retire. The Belarusian won the titles
at Miami and Marbella before reaching Stuttgart where she lost to Goerges in the opening round due to retirement.
After recovering from her injuries, Azarenka entered this WTA Premier Mandatory event confidently and sailed smoothly into the quarter-finals after earning double bagels against Russian Vera Dushevina, double breadsticks against
Swede qualifier Sofia Arvidsson and a bagel against Spaniard Arantxa Parra Santonja. Despite facing some difficulties in the quarters, she managed to dump the Czech Lucie Safarova in a three set thriller.
Azarenka re-ignited her spark in this match and took revenge from the German, ranked 22 places below her, by dumping her in seventy-eight minutes.
21-year-old Belarusian smoothly held her opening serve to level the scores at 1-1. She then kept her entire serves smoothly and broke the German’s serve in the fifth game to clinch the set with a 6-4 win in just forty-five minutes.
She registered an impressive 78 percent win on her higher first serve share and saved the only breakpoint faced.
Azarenka kept momentum rolling into the final set and leaped over Goerges in the third game to take the lead. She broke the German’s serve again in the seventh game to eventually seal the deal by winning six games to two. The Belarusian
clobbered many unforced errors and two double faults but she converted two out six breakpoint opportunities to her advantage to win easily.
Talking about it in a post match interview, Azarenka said, "I came very motivated to play this match and show my best tennis. I had to be the one dominating the game and not her, because she has really big shots and when she goes
for it it's tough to see where she's hitting."
Goerges, on the other side of net, was on a nine match winning streak. Her latest win in the streak came in the quarterfinals when she triumphed over world number one Caroline Wozniacki. Despite her higher first serve share of
62 percent, she earned a poor 56 percent win on it. Throughout the match, she squandered the only break point opportunity she faced.
Next up for Azarenka is the sixteenth seeded Czech Petra Kvitova who slew sixth seeded Chinese Li Na with a breadstick.
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