Victoria Azarenka vs Marion Bartoli – Match Preview: TEB BNP Paribas WTA Championships 2011
This year’s WTA championships are being held at the Sinan Erdem Dome in Istanbul, Turkey and the players will encounter each other on indoor hard courts. The eight players have been divided in two groups of Red and White and are set to compete in round robin matches.
Fourth seeded Victoria Azarenka and the new addition after Maria Sharapova retired; Marion Bartoli will clash against each other to conclude the fourth day of the WTA Championships on Friday the 28th of October.
The two challengers have duelled against each other eight times and are well aware of each other’s style of play and technique. In the head-to-head series Belarusian Azarenka takes the lead with seven matches to Frenchwoman Bartoli’s one. Their initial meeting took place in 2007 at the Australian Open and Azarenka had conquered Bartoli in straight sets.
The second time both faced each other was in 2009 in Brisbane during the final and once more Azarenka defeated the Frenchwoman in straight sets to haul the title. In addition, during 2010 the players competed against each other four times and in all the matches played Azarenka thrashed Bartoli.
However, this year they met twice and finally Bartoli was able to win a game against her adversary but in their last meeting which took place at the Tokyo-Pan Pacific Open, Azarenka destroyed Bartoli in straight sets.
Ninth seeded Bartoli is making her second appearance at the year-end Championships and the first time she qualified for the year end championships was back in 2007. Even though, she lost the first round robin match to top seeded Justine Henin, she managed to win the second match against third seeded Serbian Jelena Jankovic.
Nevertheless, during the start of the year Bartoli showed tremendous improvement with results as a semi finalist and quarterfinalist in Brisbane and Hobart. However, she saw early round exits at the Australian Open and Dubai but she was soon to pick up and was a runner-up at Indian Wells as her success was ended by Caroline Wozniacki.
Although a semi finalist at the French Open, she was quick to bag a title at the AEGON Classic tournament held in Eastbourne, Great Britain by defeating Petra Kvitova. The last title that Bartoli accomplished this year was in Osaka, Japan and she defeated current US Open Champion Samantha Stosur.
Mean while, Azarenka is making her third appearance at the season-end Championships and this time she was lucky to pass the Round Robin stages with a powerful and improved style. She not only defeated the current French Open champion but also defeated Aussie Stosur and finally qualified into the semi finals.
This year the fourth seeded Belarusian claimed three titles in Miami, Marbella and most recently in Luxembourg. In addition, she reached her first Grand Slam semi final at Wimbledon and in her career has won eight WTA singles titles.
A majority of tennis critics and tennis virtuosos are of the view that Victoria Azarenka will keep her winning streak alive against Bartoli. Nonetheless, Azarenka should not take Bartoli lightly and play vigilantly.
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