Victoria Azarenka thrashes Marion Bartoli to reach the final – China Open 2012
Reigning world number one, Victoria Azarenka, trashed the 10th ranked Frenchwoman, Marion Bartoli, in the semi-final of the China Open on Saturday. She took an hour and 34 minutes to round off the chapter of Bartoli in straight sets with the scores of 6-4, 6-2.
Bartoli has not been able to beat Azarenka in this season. She trails the head-to-head series by 3-9 including this loss and definitely requires some refining to do with her forehand reach that is limited due to her double-handed playing style.
The contest started with a trade of breakthroughs but soon the players settled into the match and capitalized on their serves. Azarenka was testing the 28-year-old French throughout but wasn’t able to sneak a breakpoint. However, the inevitable breakthrough came in the 10th game of the match when Bartoli failed to hit a return after a blistering quick forehand stroke from the 23-year-old Belarusian.
Azarenka held her serve in the first game of the second set before three successive breakpoints were witnessed at the hard courts of Beijing. She held her serve again to make it 4-1 in her favour and both players failed to hold serve in the following three games that ended the encounter in favour of the top ranked woman in the world.
Azarenka won 72 points in total compared to 52 of her rival. She broke serve on six different occurrences from the allotted seven and saved four of them to retain the lead. Both players managed three aces apiece in the match that put ignited some interest from the fans in the match.
With this triumph, it is going to be yet another mind-startling contest between the number one tennis women in the world, Victoria Azarenka, against the former world top ranked Russian blonde, Maria Sharapova.
Both players are the Top-2 seeded players in the contest that clearly shows that it has been an event of seeded players especially very productive for the seventh seed Chinese superstar, Li Na, who confirmed her placed in the Top-8 elite players scheduled to travel to the most beautiful city of Istanbul later this month to contest for the season-end finale.
Tags: