Victoria Azarenka turns down Alberta Brianti in her opening clash – French Open 2012
Reigning world number one, Victoria Azarenka, avoided an opening round upset at the hands of Italian veteran, Alberta Brianti, at the French Open on Monday. The top seed Belarusian had to recover from a one-set deficit in the contest
to turn the tables on Brianti in three sets, 6-7(6), 6-4, 6-2, to march into the second round of the Grand Slam event in Paris, France.
Top ranked Azarenka had yet another sloppy start to the battle against the Italian and was quickly found struggling with her game. The Belarusian spilled out a number of unforced errors, reaching a total of 60 in the entire matchup,
to provide an ideal start to Brianti. However, it was her sheer class and determination which propelled her to edge past the Italian in the last two sets in style.
"Before maybe I would just give up and go home. I was kind of thinking there was a flight straight to Minsk around 3 o'clock tomorrow, so I could catch that," Azarenka said. "But I didn't want to leave too soon."
"I think it was maybe a mix of things," she added. "I was waiting a long time for my first match here, so I couldn't wait to get out there. Maybe I was rushing too much to finish the points. Plus I also have to give Alberta a lot
of credit, she played really well, and she pushed me to dig deep today. Bad days happen. The important thing is how I came out of it.”
She was broken three times in the opening set but managed to come up with three cracking break point conversions to move neck-to-neck with her Italian opponent. The world number one eventually stumbled in the last moments of the
tie-breaker round and Brianti clinched the opener at 7-6(6).
Brianti rocketed away to 4-0 in the following set and was on the verge of registering the biggest of the tournament but couldn’t deliver the decisive blow to finish on the losing side in the end. Azarenka cruised through the rest
of the match with commanding ease and came out of the contest as the deserving winner.
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