All was going well for the top seeds as the 2nd round wrapped up on Thursday; until the final match on Rod Laver Arena that witnessed a classic battle.
(Rank/Seed)
1/1 Azarenka was unusually pumped up as she crushed Daniilidou 61 60!
3/3 Serena showed no signs of her ankle injury in beating Muguruza 62 60!
World number 50, 18 year old Robson outlasted (8/8) Kvitova 26 63 119 in the final match on Thursday. Despite trailing 0-3 in the 3rd and serving for the match at 6-5, Robson mentally outlasted an often anxious Kvitova to take her 2nd career top 10 win, having beaten Li at last years US Open. Though she hit an incredible 18 aces (sometimes on 2nd serves), Kvitova was plagued by an equal amount of double faults. Still, the stats seem to show that Kvitova should have won the match; she had a higher 1st serve percentage, hit more aces, had a cleaner winner:error ratio and won 3 more points than her opponent. However, Robson had the nerve and with Watson also reaching the 3rd round, its a 1st at the Australian Open for Brits since 1987! This section of the draw is now wide open as I predicted and Stephens is up next for Robson; the woman who beat her last week in Hobart.
10/10 Wozniacki held off a late second set surge from 16 year old Vekic to win 61 64.
Elsewhere, (15/14) Kirilenko and (16/16) Vinci won in straight sets, whilst (17/17) Safarova was beaten 75 75 by Jovanovski and (20/21) Lepchenko was beaten by Hobart champion Vesnina 64 62. Wickmayer, Stephens and Kuznetsova also won, the latter beating 26th seed Hsieh, whilst Date Krumm beat Peer to become the 2nd oldest woman to reach the 3rd round of a Slam in the open era!
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