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World number one Serena Williams and her best friend on tour Caroline Wozniacki’s quarter-final collision course threatens to be derailed, with both players facing tough second-round matches against opponents attempting to bounce back from contrasting injuries.
Williams started her bid to win her first Australian Open title since 2010 by defeating Belgium’s Alison van Uytvanck in straight sets, but her next match will see her bump into a very familiar foe.
That foe is Russia’s Vera Zvonareva, a former world number two and two-time Grand Slam finalist whose long-term shoulder injury and illness saw her almost drop out of the top 1,000 last year.
The 30-year-old was in 2011 only behind then-world number one Caroline Wozniacki as they, in tandem, dominated the rankings during the period in which Serena Williams was sidelined by a foot injury.
Zvonareva reached the aforementioned two Grand Slam finals in 2010, losing to Williams and Kim Clijsters at Wimbledon and the US Open respectively.
She is also a two-time Australian Open semi-finalist, getting this far in 2009 and 2011, where she lost to Dinara Safina and Clijsters respectively.
At present Zvonareva is ranked 203rd in the world after reaching the quarter-finals in Shenzhen where she lost to eventual finalist Timea Bacsinszky on a retirement. Due to her lowly ranking, the Russian has a protected ranking in this year’s tournament.
Her last notable match before her long-term shoulder injury was against Serena Williams at the 2012 Olympic Games, where she managed to win just one game as the American romped to the gold medal.
It was also Williams who handed Zvonareva her first loss at Grand Slam level, way back at the 2002 French Open when the American, who was about to embark on the ‘Serena Slam’, came from a set down to win in three sets.
But if there’s any player who can at least trouble Serena Williams, it’s Zvonareva. Her most recent win over the American came at Eastbourne in 2011 in what was the American’s first tournament back from the aforementioned foot injury. However, Serena will start the clear-cut favourite, and is expected to show the Russian no mercy.
Their match is second on Rod Laver Arena after the match between sixth seed Agnieszka Radwanska and Sweden’s Johanna Larsson.
Meanwhile, world number eight Caroline Wozniacki will face an even tougher test when she opposes her successor as world number one in 2012, two-time champion Victoria Azarenka, who this year is unseeded after an injury-plagued 2014 saw her world ranking drop from second this time last year to its current 44.
The Dane defeated American Taylor Townsend in her first match to set up the showdown against Azarenka, a first-round victor against another American in Sloane Stephens.
Azarenka’s win over Stephens was her third consecutive in straight sets at Melbourne Park, after previous wins in the fourth round last year and in that controversial semi-final the year before that.
Azarenka succeeded Wozniacki as world number one after she won her first Grand Slam title at the Australian Open three years ago. It kicked off a long period of dominance for the 25-year-old, during which she would win another Australian Open title and reign at the top of the rankings for 51 weeks before being succeeded by current top holder Serena Williams in February of 2013.
The Belarusian’s loss to Agnieszka Radwanska in the Australian Open quarter-finals last year, where she was chasing a hat-trick, kicked off a year from hell for Azarenka.
A foot injury incurred immediately after the Australian Open saw her play just two matches between then and Wimbledon, in the process missing the French Open, her first absence from a Grand Slam tournament since 2006.
Azarenka then marked 200 consecutive weeks in the top ten in the week of the Stanford tournament, but a loss to Venus Williams there ended that streak, seeing her drop out of the world’s elite for the first time since 2010.
A quarter-final run at the US Open, where Ekaterina Makarova stopped her from facing Serena Williams in the semi-finals, was followed by another early loss at her next tournament, this time to eventual champion Ana Ivanovic in Tokyo. After the latter loss, she called time on her 2014 season.
Her 2015 season started at the Brisbane International, which she had to win to keep alive any faint chances she had of being seeded at this year’s Australian Open. Despite holding match point in the second set against Karolina Pliskova, the Belarussian lost in three sets, dropping out of the top 40 in the process.
She loomed as the most dangerous unseeded floater in this year’s women’s draw and the luck of the draw has her facing eighth seed Wozniacki tonight.
It will be their first Grand Slam meeting since the 2008 US Open, and first overall since Cincinnati in 2013. Their match is scheduled for first in the evening session on Margaret Court Arena.
We have already seen two top-ten female seeds depart Melbourne Park on Day 1. Can Azarenka make it three and sentence Caroline Wozniacki to her earliest Australian Open exit ever?
If the unseeded former two-time champion can defeat Wozniacki in the most interesting of second-round matches, how much damage can the Belarussian can cause at this year’s Australian Open?
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