Thursday 17 January 2013

Australian Open: Laura Robson defeats Petra Kvitova

The top match on day 4's schedule certainly lived up in terms off drama, but missed the mark on high quality as Laura Robson edged a three hour epic with Petra Kvitova to progress to the 3rd round with a 2-6 6-3 11-9 win.  This was another step forward in Laura's coming of age on the WTA tour.  In terms of the quality of tennis, it was far from her finest performance, but the way she fought under incredible mental strain having wasted a chance to serve the match out at 6-5 was admirable and made this her best victory to date.  It was a crushing loss for Kvitova who looked close to tears at time.  I still have faith though that she can find her best form in 2013.  Robson now takes on Sloane Stephens in a wide open section also featuring Kimiko Date-Krumm and Bojana Jovanovski, who took out Lucie Safarova in two tight sets.

Laura Robson

In other women's matches, Serena Williams and Victoria Azarenka continued their serene progress through the draw with each picking up another bagel; Azarenka destroyed Eleni Daniilidou, 6-1 6-0, meanwhile Serena lost one more game at the expense of Garbine Muguruza, 6-2 6-0.  Svetlana Kuznetsova and Elena Vesnina both had solid straight wins over Hsieh Su-Wei and Varvara Lepchenko respectively and should fancy their chances of reaching the last 16.

Svetlana Kuznetsova

In the men's draw, Roger Federer and Bernard Tomic both won through to a highly anticipated third rounder.  Tomic had to come through a very tough four set encounter with Daniel Brands.  Federer picked right up from his first round with a breeze past Nikolay Davydenko, 6-3 6-4 6-4.  In other notable matches, Gael Monfils survived a typically crazy-Monfils match as he lost a bagel set and apparently (I will be searching YouTube!) served up a string of double faults on match points; he eventually beat Yen-Hsun Lu in 5 sets, winning 8-6 in the final set and setting up a third round encounter with Gilles Simon.  I have heard barely anything about Andy Murray and that is how he will like it as he eased past Joao Sousa in straight sets.

Highlights from day 4

Highlights from the end of the Robson/Kvitova match

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