Victoria Azarenka outlasts Mona Barthel to reach the third round – BNP Paribas Open 2012
World number one, Victoria Azarenka, required three sets to outgun the German rising star, Mona Barthel, at the BNP Paribas Open 2012 on Friday. She joggled up a 6-4, 6-7(4), 7-6(6) victory over the 21-year-old to not only extend her unbeaten run to 18-0 but also advance into the third round at this hard court tournament taking place from 5th to 18th March.
The top seed showed a sloppy performance at her opening round match against Barthel. She squandered a 5-1 lead in the second set but pulled out the victory in three hours after prevailing in the third set tie-breaker. Azarenka crushed the German with a bagel at the Qatar ExxonMobil Open earlier this year and after earning this success, she improved to a 3-0 head-to-head record against Barthel.
Azarenka assertively entered the Indian Wells Tennis Garden and after cashing in the lone break opportunity, she bagged the opener with a 6-4 win. The Belarusian brushed off both breakpoints she came across and dominated throughout the set.
The 22-year-old carried her rhythm in the second set and cruised to a 5-1 lead. However, she stepped off gas after that and lost her track.
Barthel, 37th in the WTA Premier Rankings, on the other side of net took full advantage of her errors and regardless of committing more unforced errors, she dragged the set to a tie-breaker. The German edged past Azarenka in it and eventually equalised the set scores.
The Belarusian number one kept her drastic form in the final set and after spilling eight double faults, she trailed at 1-4. Azarenka was also 3-5 down but she hit back after that and enforced a tie-breaker. The higher ranked dominated in it and subsequently clicked the set with a 7-6 (6) score line.
After earning this spotlight, the Belarusian maintained her unbeaten record this season. She clobbered a higher first serve share of 70 per cent as compared to Barthel’s 50 percent and spectacularly marked 61 out of 99 points on it.
Next in queue for the highest ranked player of the tournament is the 25th seeded Russian, Svetlana Kuznetsova, who registered a retirement victory over Timea Bacsinszky.
Tags: