WTA Championships – Stosur seeking third round-robin win
Day two of the WTA Tour Championships in Doha dished up the biggest upset of the tournament so far, with Samantha Stosur ending the 11-match winning streak of the world’s top ranked player, Caroline Wozniacki.
On day three, the Australian will be seeking to complete the round-robin stage with an unblemished record, while Wozniacki will be seeking a victory to keep her semi-final hopes alive. Here we preview their matches.
Samantha Stosur vs Elena Dementieva
With two matches under her belt, Stosur remains the only undefeated player in the Maroon Group of the round-robin stage and is on course for a place in the semi-finals.
With straight set victories against Francesca Schiavone and Wozniacki (the upset of the tournament so far) already in the bag, a win against a clearly struggling Dementieva now seems to be almost a formality.
The Russian had withdrawn from her second-round match in Luxembourg last week with an ankle injury, and her inability to make a contest out of her opening match against Wozniacki clearly indicates something is still awry.
It’s a pity too, because this pair’s fourth round US Open clash, a two-hour-and-38-minute affair that goes into the record books as the latest-finishing women's match in US Open history, had to be close to the women’s match of the 2010 tournament.
Caroline Wozniacki vs Francesca Schiavone
Suddenly, this is a very interesting clash. Having breezed through her opener against Dementieva, the Wozniacki juggernaut was stopped in its tracks by Stosur and the top seed now finds herself 1-1 after two round-robin matches in Doha.
The youngest player in the draw is now playing for her life, and Roland Garros champion Schiavone, as the world No. 1 well knows, is a tough opponent. The 30-year-old bested Wozniacki in the French Open quarter-finals when her all-court game proved too much for the Dane on clay. Wozniacki gained some small revenge in the Montreal quarter-finals, but this match will mean so much more as she attempts to stay in the hunt for the biggest title of her career.
The hard courts in Qatar, however, should once again tip things in Wozniacki’s favour, and Schiavone lacks the weapons Stosur has at her command to overpower the 20-year-old.
Kim Clijsters vs Victoria Azarenka
The draw favoured Clijsters when she had her first competitive hit-out since winning the US Open against the ailing Jelena Jankovic in her opening round-robin match.
She thus arrives in this match with one victory already in the bag, while Azarenka will be seeking to pick herself up from her 7-6(4), 6- 4 loss to second seed Vera Zvonareva yesterday, a match where the Belarusian went a break up at the start of both sets.
It was a mentally and physically draining match, and one that one has to wonder whether Azarenka can recover from in time for her match against the world No. 4.
In her favour, the world No. 10 did win the last time the two played (on grass in the Eastbourne quarter-finals this year) but Clijsters is a proven big game performer and holds a 2-1 winning record over Azarenka, with both those victories coming on hard courts.
Azarenka’s best wasn’t enough to upset Zvonareva yesterday, and it shouldn’t derail Clijsters’ campaign either.
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