Newly crowned Australian Open champion and the number one female tennis player in the world, Victoria Azarenka has pulled out of the Fed Cup singles match against the United States of America this week, citing back injury problems.
It would have been the first match for the Belarusian player since being crowned the Australian Open champion but the injury in her lower back that has been her chronic problem since her youth days has prevented her from donning the colors of Belarus for the match.
Azarenka breezed through the match against Maria Sharapova in the final of the first Grand Slam of the year, where she was the underdog for most people, defeating the former world number one by a margin of 6-3, 6-0 to win her first major title in professional tennis. The 22 year old has a perfect record in singles in 2012, having not lost a match in singles and boasting a 12-0 record this year and has already won two titles, the other being in Sydney.
In the absence of Victoria Azarenka, Anastasiya Yakimova was drafted in as her replacement at the last minute and she was handsomely beaten by Christina McHale 6-0, 6-4 in the opening singles match before Serena Williams put the Americans in the driving seat by winning her match to give them a 2-0 lead, with three matches still to be played.
Azarenka has been a big crowd puller this year, with her attitude during wins in the Australian Open putting the proverbial icing on top of the cake. Her pulling out of the Fed Cup tie took out the gloss from the match which saw attendances drop considerably for one of the biggest matches in the history of tennis in Belarus and with Victoria Azarenka out, their chances of progressing looks extremely bleak at the moment.
Victoria Azarenka was the first player to make it through to the women’s quarter finals at this year’s Australian Open, and she did so in some style.
Her match against Iveta Benisova was over in two sets, the Belarusian winning easily 6-2, 6-2. The next opponent she faces will be Radwanska, who will present a tougher challenge, and Azarenka would do well to continue her record of not dropping a set in the tournament so far.
The match against the Czech Benisova took just 78 minutes as Azarenka swiftly took control and continued her dominance into the second set. The third seed made the most of her service games, winning 83% of points on her first serve, and a solid 63% on her second, and then secured four of ten break points, to give her an easy victory.
The quarterfinals will see Azarenka take on the number 8 seed Agnieszka Radwanska, who thrashed Goerges 6-1,6-1 in the last round. This should prove to be a competitive affair with both players on form, and when they met recently at Sydney, the game went to the third set before Azarenka scraped through to victory. Radwanska will also be aware that head to head, she is at a disadvantage, with just 3 wins to the Belarusian’s 6.
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Victoria Azarenka, currently ranked no. 3 in the world, gave some brilliant performances in the recently concluded Sydney International to win the tournament.
Azarenka started the game poorly, handing an advantage to the Frenchwoman. The scores stood at 2-5 for the first set, when Azarenka started her comeback. She won five consecutive games, breaking Marion Bartoli’s serve twice, to finish the set at 7-5. Bartoli was frustrated, and it was evident during the break when she repeatedly struck her racquet against the bag.
However, it looked like Bartoli had moved past her emotional outburst by the start of the second game. She started the game quite strongly, but was evenly matched by Azarenka. After a small interruption in the game due to a power outage, the match resumed and Azarenka broke the Frenchwoman’s serve.
The set stood at 3-3 when Bartoli broke Azarenka’s serve through some very aggressive shots. Soon after, Azarenka regained her momentum and the set reached 5-4 with Azarenka serving for the match. Bartoli proved to be no match for the Belarusian as she thundered her way past with a straight set victory 7-5, 6-4.
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Belarusian tennis sensation Victoria Azarenka will play world number one women’s tennis player Caroline Wozniacki in the Rogers Cup in Montreal, Canada when the tournament returns to the city after a gap of a year. This will be the first time that the 22 year old Azarenka will play in the tournament whereas her opponent is a veteran in the competition, having won the trophy the last time the event was held in Montreal. Although the Danish world number one Wozniacki did not have the best of seasons in terms of Grand Slam success this year, she will start as the favorite against the Belarusian.
The 22 year old Victoria Azarenka is yet to win a single Grand Slam title in her career but according to many experts of tennis, her game resembles that of legendary Czech tennis player Martina Navratilova and she has been marked as one of those players who will come to dominate the women’s game for years to come. Currently ranked number 3 in the world, Azarenka breezed through to the finals of the WTA Championships after reaching the semi-final stages of Wimbledon in 2011.
Alongside Azarenka and Wozniacki, Marion Bartoli and Vera Zvonareva will also play in the competition but it is being assumed that the biggest rivalry that will come out of this tournament will be that between Azarenka and Wozniacki, who have played each other many times with the Dane holding the upper hand in most of those one-on-one matches. But Victoria Azarenka is not a player who can be written off by statistics and she will be the one going into the tournament with form on her side.
Whether she manages to overcome the other three players is a whole new question but it is certain that Azarenka has announced her arrival on the big stage of tennis.
Victoria Azarenka is off relaxing after a tough season mentally and physically. Having just lost in the WTA Championships final to Petra Kvitova, she knows that she still has some bits of her game that she needs to work on – but it won’t be her grunting!
In spite of a new rule which is coming in to force to stop players distracting each other with their screams / grunts, Azarenka insists that she has nothing to worry about, and that she couldn’t stop even if she wanted to!
She said, “It’s not about the rule. You cannot stop people from doing what they do on the court. I mean, it’s not, you’re not trying to distract anybody. It’s just normal. For me, I do it during the practice, during the matches. If some people do it only during the matches to distract, maybe it’s bothering. But I do it all the time. It’s just a part of me, a part of who I am.”
“I’m the way I play since I was actually 8 years old, and it’s become a part of my movement, part of my game. So I cannot change it and I’m not going to.”
Victoria Azarenka was born on 31 July 1989 and is Leo by birth-sign. Like her sun-sign, she does perfect justice to the game of Tennis and till date has occupied her majestic victories and graceful participation, which pushed her to owning the rank of no. 4 as a professional tennis player on May 2011. With her excellent playing career and performance she became the highest-ranked Belarusian player who could surpass Natasha Zvereva by one spot. In 2007, she won a mixed doubles grand slam in US Open, partnering with Max Mirnyi, followed by another victory in 2008 French Open along with Bob Bryan.
Apart from these two, she has bagged seven victories in singles titles which also include the Premier Mandatory Sony Ericsson Open in 2009 and 2011 and same year saw her appearing in one Grand Slam semifinal at the Wimbledon Championships, along with 5 quarterfinal appearances. She with excellent planning, resilience and hard work added with practice and confidence, she kept on climbing the stairs of success and continued with her astonishing deliveries and powerful throws to add to the excitement of her fans and followers. She went forward to win the Australian Open and US Open in 2005 and thus became the ITF Junior Girls World Champion for the year. To add to her aura, she was the first Player from Belarus to reach the glory. The same year saw her winning the first ITF title in Pelange and Luxemburg, which was followed by her reaching the first pro-level se=mi finals in China, where she won three qualifying rounds after defeating martina Sucha and Shuai Peng, however she had lost to the champion Yan Zi, eventually.
Nevertheless, she took her defeat gracefully and learnt from it positively, only to polish and develop her skills for the future attacks from further champions. The year 2006 too, saw her glorified wins and victories apart from her race towards the best, defeating players from all parts of the world and finally reaching the ITF Final event in Pittsburgh, where she had lost to Aleksandra Wozniak form Canada. She was ranked world no. 96 in 2007 and began the year by playing two tournaments in Australia. Azarenka climbed ahead till the third round of a Grand slam in Australian Open of a Grand Slam singles tournament, where she lost to Jelena Jankovic, world’s no. 11, in straight sets. Azarenka’s victories and defeats were playing a significant role in further strengthening her game policies and strongholds which drove her to harnessing her hidden skills and getting away with her weaknesses.
However, there are criticisms made against her by some ex-professionals in this field, who found the noises made by her during the game annoying. Her screams and yells proved to be disturbing and irritating to the onlookers as well as professionals who played the game with mature discipline and silence. She is also noted for her tendency to lose her cool during the matches, and this was quite a reason for her being infamous for her grunts and expressive sounds of disappointments.
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February 14, 2012 9:01 am | 
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