Kirilenko stops further Chinese success

Yesterday on Hisense Maria Sharapova made no sense of her match winning 6-0 6-0 for the second successive time.  Little chance of Kirilenko becoming the second Russian Maria to whitewash an opponent in as many days on this court.  To do so the 14th seed would have to firstly defeat highly
rated Chinese player Peng Shuai who narrowly missed out on a seeding for this tournament and thrashed her Canadian first round opposition.
Not that Kirilenko had much trouble either, dispensing with talented American Vania King also in straight sets.
Luckily on the first sweltering day of this year's Aus Open, it was the opening match so the dehydration and other negative effects of extreme heat would have the least impact on these two.

Peng opened the match by serving and holding and Maria repeated that formula when next to try.  No obvious problems arose and plenty of good tennis was shared between the combatants for four games and then Peng ran into some trouble with a number of break points with which to deal in the fifth game.

She handled the crisis with aplomb and proceed to look the more comfortable at times with a far more reliable first serve.  Kirilenko had to rely too much on a second delivery yet managed to tread a path to 5-5, a scoreline that does not discriminate between methods used to reach it.

While the girls and played some decent ground strokes and the occasional useful volley (both are good exponents of the doubles caper) they sure took their time about things with an hour passed and Set 1 neither won nor lost.

Out of the blue Peng lost her serve and thoughts of who might handle the tie break the better dissipated with Kirilenko now in the box seat to serve it out.
Peng had nothing to give in response and dejectedly relented to the Russian 5-7.

Still dejected Peng now had to deal with a confident Kirilenko whose shot making had lifted a notch or two and was willing to take a few more risks than she had for most of the match.  Peng lost her serve to trail 0-1 and now it was she who needed to change her game plan to try to find a entry back into a match rapidly slipping away.

Maria held and then broke yet again to put the result beyond doubt.  When Peng next served a ball she trailed 0-4 and the third round appearance at Melbourne Park would need to wait until 2014 (barring something amazing).

Peng won her remaining serves with ease, but Maria was almost untouchable so it hardly mattered.  At 5-2 the 14th seed did the necessary to close out a most impressive win 7-5 6-2 and force a third round encounter with possibly Yanina Wickmayer.