Victoria Azarenka moved to 18-0 for the season, but overcame a huge fight from Mona Barthel in an extraordinary three hour marathon. Azarenka looked set for a routine victory as she led 6-4 5-1 when Barthel came alive to snatch the second set and race into a 4-1 lead in the third set. Barthel had…
Marion Bartoli The quarter-finals at the WTA Premier event in Paris failed to disappoint on Friday as three of the matches were pushed to three sets and the remaining one saw the top seed ousted. The best match of the day saw Marion Bartoli produce a terrific fightback to beat Roberta Vinci, 4-6 6-4 7-6. …
Yanina Wickmayer I am running out of superlatives to describe Mona Barthel as she continued her mightily impressive streak with another convincing win on Thursday. Barthel won the last nine games of her match with Pauline Parmentier to win 6-3 6-0 and storm into the quarter-finals where she will play Yanina Wickmayer. Wickmayer recorded a…
Li Na This week’s tournament in Paris has seen a flurry of withdrawals and this was further compounded on Monday as the number 3 seed, Li Na retired from her match down 7-6 4-2 to Tsvetana Pironkova. Pironkova raced into a 5-0 lead in just 18 minutes, but was pegged back to 5-5 as Li…
Victoria Azarenka Victoria Azarenka and Mona Barthel won the warm-up tournaments for the Australian Open in Sydney and Hobart respectively. Azarenka beat Li Na, 6-2 1-6 6-3 in an intriguing, yet error-strewn contest. Azarenka was the more consistent player in the final set as Li produced far too many errors. It was a competitive final…
Vera Zvonareva Two of the seeds fell on the second day of action at the Apia International in Sydney. Sam Stosur was out-of-sorts as she was defeated by Francesca Schiavone, 6-2 6-4. There were some exciting points in the match (see highlights below) and Schiavone continued her solid start to the 2012 season. It was…
Here is the next post in my series of entries previewing the 2012 tennis season… I have already stated who I think will win the majors; now I give you my predictions for the top 10 in the WTA rankings at the end of 2012. Like this year, I expect the ranking points to be…
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