Victoria Azarenka has laid down the gauntlet in 2016, winning the Brisbane International, her first title since 2013 in Cincinnati. Azarenka defeated Angelique Kerber, 6-3 6-1 in 73 minutes; in fact the Belarusian dropped just 17 games throughout the whole tournament in what was a dominant sweep through the draw. After their last match at the…
The first week of the 2016 tennis season has been especially chaotic with a flood of withdrawals and the top three seeds in Brisbane, Simona Halep, Garbiñe Muguruza and Maria Sharapova, all pulling out with injury. However, the week will end with what promises to be a FASCINATING finale to the 2016 Brisbane International between Victoria Azarenka…
What a week for Samantha Crawford… The 20-year-old American, currently ranked at number 142 in the world, has well and truly put herself on the map with a tremendous breakthrough week at the Brisbane International. Crawford came through three rounds of qualifying, knocking out the number one seed, Tsvetana Pironkova in the first round, followed by…
Tied at 2-2 in their head-to-head, Angelique Kerber and Carla Suárez Navarro will not only be fighting for a lead in the match-up, but a place in a first Brisbane International final. The Spaniard, Suárez Navarro, toughed out a topsy-turvy encounter with Varvara Lepchenko in the quarter-finals, 4-6 6-4 7-5, coming through in two hours…
It’s been a rather wacky start to the 2016 tennis season. Tuesday was a miserable day for the WTA with Simona Halep and Maria Sharapova both pulling out of Brisbane, and Serena Williams and Petra Kvitova retiring from their matches at the Hopman Cup and Shenzhen respectively. However, Wednesday presented some classic WTA drama… Broady…
In a now Halep and Sharapova-less Brisbane draw, Garbiñe Muguruza is the highest seed remaining. She will play her first match of the 2016 season on Wednesday against Varvara Lepchenko. Muguruza looked calm and in high spirits in press (see video below). I could listen to Garbiñe talk for hours… she’s enchanting! I like the excited…
Introducing Match Points… a brand new feature post for Moo’s Tennis Blog in 2016. Match Points aims to bring together the most interesting points of the tennis day including best matches, scorelines, tweets, facebook posts, videos and plenty more. It’s still a work in progress so any feedback is appreciated. It won’t be a daily feature just yet but when I…
Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova and Alizé Cornet both beat higher ranked opposition on day 1 of the Brisbane International to set up a second round tie for Tuesday, second up on show court 1. Pavs delivered the best performance on Sunday, overwhelming the number five seed, Timea Bacsinszky, 6-2 6-1. Peak Pavs was definitely in the house…
The finalists from the last two trophy matches in Auckland, Venus Williams, Ana Ivanovic and Caroline Wozniacki headline a reasonably strong line-up for the International event in Auckland with all eight seeds from the world’s top 45. Always attracting excellent crowds, Auckland is one of the best International events of the year and a fun one to follow.…
This post previews six of the first round matches from the 2016 Brisbane International main draw including Sunday’s matches featuring Timea Bacsinszky v Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova and Alizé Cornet v Kristina Mladenovic. In case you missed it, you can read a (newly revamped!) preview of the full main draw on mootennis.com HERE. 1. Maria Sharapova (3) v Ekaterina Makarova A…
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