Victoria Azarenka had to draw on all her reserves by saving two match points in a heroic 3 hour, 6 minute tussle with Angelique Kerber in the WTA Championships.
The top-seeded Belarussian beat the German revelation 6-7 (11/13), 7-6 (7/2), 6-4 in an encounter full of magnificent rallies and surprises. Her win leaves Azarenka needing just one more win to guarantee her finishing the year as world No. 1.
Azarenka saved both match points by following up sound serving with bold and courageous driving. That helped make up for the five set points that Kerber had enterprisingly denied the top seed in the first set tie break.
Had Azarenka lost either of them — from 4-5, 15-40 in the second set — a pathway might have opened up for Maria Sharapova to sneak through to the summit instead.
Azarenka would now have to lose both her remaining group matches for this to happen, even though Sharapova later made sure of a place in tomorrow’s semi-finals by beating Agnieszka Radwanska, the Polish Wimbledon runner-up, 5-7, 7-5, 7-5 in another three-hour encounter.
“I felt I had to go for it on both match points,” Azarenka said. “I felt she would not miss, so I didn’t want to wait for her to make a mistake — I was determined to make it happen.”
“I wanted to change the momentum and take destiny into my own hands. I had a clear mind of what I had to do. It takes time to go through [what’s needed] and learn that,” she added. “I feel really proud I was a part of this match. Honestly you feel like you don’t want to leave the court, the atmosphere is so good.”
Azarenka’s three-set encounter also guaranteed that Serena Williams’ second success of the tournament earned the American a semi-final place.
The Olympic, US Open and Wimbledon champion won 7-6 (7/2), 6-3 against Li Na, the former French Open champion from China, but only after a noisy and surprisingly fraught performance.
Williams had to overcome the emotions which impelled her to smash a racket and earned her a code-violation warning.
That happened during a weird fourth game in which one of the finest servers in the history of the game delivered two successive double faults to go a break down.
“I guess I was angry and I wasn’t able to control myself,” she said. “But sometimes I play better when I get angry.”
Hers was a triumph of will more than anything, for she landed less than 50 percent of her first serves, dropped service games five times, and needed 1 hour, 50 minutes to get the win.
Bayer 04 Leverkusen go into today’s match at TSG 1899 Hoffenheim stung from their first league defeat in 16 months. Leverkusen were beaten 3-2 at home by RB Leipzig before the international break, the first loss since May last year for the reigning league and cup champions. While any defeat, particularly against a likely title rival, would have disappointed coach Xabi Alonso, the way in which it happened would be most concerning. Just as they did in the Supercup against VfB Stuttgart and in the league opener to Borussia Moenchengladbach, Leverkusen scored first, but were pegged back. However, while Leverkusen rallied late to
If all goes well when the biggest marathon field ever gathered in Australia races 42km through the streets of Sydney on Sunday, World Marathon Majors (WMM) will soon add a seventh race to the elite series. The Sydney Marathon is to become the first race since Tokyo in 2013 to join long-established majors in New York, London, Boston, Berlin and Chicago if it passes the WMM assessment criteria for the second straight year. “We’re really excited for Sunday to arrive,” race director Wayne Larden told a news conference in Sydney yesterday. “We’re prepared, we’re ready. All of our plans look good on
The lights dimmed and the crowd hushed as Karoline Kristensen entered for her performance. However, this was no ordinary Dutch theater: The temperature was 80°C and the audience naked apart from a towel. Dressed in a swimsuit and to the tune of emotional music, the 21-year-old Kristensen started her routine, performed inside a large sauna, with a bed of hot rocks in the middle. For a week this month, a group of wellness practitioners, called “sauna masters,” are gathering at a picturesque health resort in the Netherlands to compete in this year’s Aufguss world sauna championships. The practice takes its name from a
When details from a scientific experiment that could have helped clear Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva landed at the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the leader of the organization’s reaction was unequivocal: “We have to stop that urgently,” he wrote. No mention of the test ever became public and Valieva’s defense at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) went on without it. What effect the information could have had on Valieva’s case is unclear, but without it, the skater, then 15 years old, was eventually disqualified from the 2022 Winter Olympics after testing positive for a banned heart medication that would later