Victoria Azarenka ousts Klara Zakopalova to ease into quarterfinal – Toray Pan Pacific Open 2011
Third seeded Victoria Azarenka was also able to ease away in the third round of the Toray Pan Pacific Open 2011 by defeating Czech Klara Zakopalova. After duelling for just one hour and thirty eight minutes on outdoor hard courts
of the Ariake Colosseum, Tokyo, Japan, the third seeded Bulgarian knocked out the Czech, winning 6-3, 7-5 on the 28th of September.
Initiating the opening set was the 22 year-old Azarenka; however, she got off on to a bad start as she lost the first game after battling out four deuces. Mean while, Zakopalova was riding on a white horse by not only winning a
game on her opponent’s serve but also her own and by breaking her opponent for the second time in the third game, she was leading 3-0.
It was in the fourth game that Azarenka finally started to ease into the game, as she had made a comeback full of revenge by breaking her opponent in the very next game. She then went on to using the serve-break-serve technique
to equalize the score at 3-3 in the sixth game.
During the last three games, Azarenka was on a high as she not only held serve but pounced at the first opportunity Zakopalova gave her, breaking the Czech was the final straw that lead to Azarenka’s victory of the opening set.
The Czech was to open the score board of the second set but Azarenka was looking to avenge her first game loss of the opening set and broke her opponent in the first game. However, the Bulgarian was also broken in the very next
game by Czech, who was not going give up the match that easily.
After holding serve in the third game, Zakopalova again broke Azarenka to edge a bit further in the fourth but the Bulgarian was a survivor of the fittest and again broken back. The players again broke each other back to back in
the next two games and by the eighth game the score board had balanced at 4-4 and then 5-5.
At this point of the game, the crowd thought that the game would be pushed into a tiebreaker but a slip from Zakopalova in the eleventh game resulted in a lucky break for Azarenka. As Zakopalova double faulted by the end of the
eleventh game, Azarenka was now serving for the match and smashing an ace at 40-30 she snatched a 7-5 victory to secure a spot in the quarterfinal of the event.
Tags: