Vesnina latest Vika victim

A number of parallels exist when comparing today's mismatch between top seed Victoria Azarenka and Russian Elena Vesnina, and yesterday's practice hit that Sharapova had with someone in the guise of a fourth round encounter.
The winners are the finalists from last year's Aus Open.  Both victors spend more energy vocalising than hitting tennis balls.  Both Vika and Maria send more demoralised losing players into therapy than any other tour professionals.

Today Elena Vesnina, fresh from her first WTA victory in Hobart in the lead up to the Aus Open, must have harboured thoughts of a creditable performance against the top seed in the fourth round.  She had after all defeated the 21st and 16th seeds en route to this occasion.  Those scalps are meaningful to Elena and to some others, but of course they don't mean a thing to Vika who has players ranked anywhere outside the top ten for breakfast.

So the only thing of importance to the Belarusian was that Elena had a racquet with which to defend herself, because what ever else they might say about Azarenka she does fight fair.

Once the bell rang for the first round, Vika belted Elena into submission and she went for the towel.  Not quite the white towel at this stage, but she had her serve broken, and a quick check thankfully found that no bones had been similarly fractured.

Vika continued by serving it up to her already clearly rattled opponent and the judges all had her ahead on points after two rounds.  The scoring punches were mainly from the forehand and they were indeed powerful blows.

Vika returned again and again with purpose and luckily Elena moved her body in time to avoid the blows which she mainly took on the racquet, but still the scoring shots landed.  Vesnina landed one of her own but trailed on the card 1-4 before a flurry of exchanges saw Vika once again pass through the Russian's defence forcing a weak response.  The first phase of the fight was awarded to the Belarusian 6-1 and she sat down in her corner very contented.

The second phase of this bout opened with the first round and a series of blows from Elena saw the champion fall behind 0-1.  That infuriated Vika who threw back everything and the kitchen sink to score off both backhand and forehand to gain the advantage and stretch it to 5-1 before serving up a big one to take the bout 6-1 6-1.

Vika will return to fight in the quarter final against renowned pugilist Svetlana Kuznetsova while Elena Vesnina goes back into serious training.