A New First for Top-Ranked Azarenka

During a spread dry spot of an otherwise soggy Tuesday afternoon, top-seeded Victoria Azarenka and the defending United States Open champion, Samantha Stosur, packed in a quarterfinal match worth all the waiting. 

It started as a blowout for Azarenka, but one rain delay and three sets later she was fighting for every point in a third-set tiebreaker in which one last twist gave Azarenka a 6-1, 4-6, 7-6 (5) victory. 

Azarenka’s triumph sent her to the Open semifinals for the first time; her opponent will be the winner of a twice-rain-delayed quarterfinal between the No. 3 seed Maria Sharapova and No. 11 Marion Bartoli. 

But that meeting — suspended until Wednesday at Arthur Ashe Stadium with Bartoli leading, 4-0, in the first set — has a long way to go to top the Azarenka-Stosur match, one of the best on the women’s side of the draw. Each player turned on the power and used every shot in her arsenal to hold off the other. The match lasted 2 hours 23 minutes and was packed with swings of momentum and emotion. 

“I have no words,” Azarenka said. “I think we both show some excellent tennis. I think we both felt the pressure all the time. We really both gave it our all, fought really hard and made each other run like crazy.” 

A back-and-forth third set, which featured four consecutive service breaks and each player’s bouncing back from her own mistakes, careered into the tiebreaker. Stosur seemed to lose her nerve and fell behind, 0-4, with several unforced errors. But she fought back and had an edge when Azarenka committed an egregious double fault to put things back on serve at 5-4.

“You don’t want to know what I kept telling myself,” Azarenka said. “I would have to beep that, I think.” 

But instead of getting frustrated, Azarenka got mad. A drop shot for a winner put her up, 6-5, and one last wild forehand by Stosur ended it. 

“I think she played amazing, so much higher the level was today,” Azarenka said. “She made me play my best tennis. She kept hitting the lines, making those first serves. I kept saying, ‘Miss, miss,’ but she didn’t.” 

The match finished just before the rain started again, scrambling the rest of the schedule. No. 4-seeded David Ferrer managed to complete a 7-5, 7-6 (2), 6-4 victory over No. 13-seeded Richard Gasquet after their fourth-round match was stopped by rain. 

The women’s quarterfinal did not set up well for Stosur. She not only had not beaten Azarenka in six career meetings, but she also had not won a set from her. When they met in the final of a hardcourt tournament in Doha this year, Azarenka won, 6-1, 6-2. When they played in the first round of the WTA Championships last year, it was similarly lopsided, 6-2, 6-2. 

On top of that, Azarenka has not lost this year after winning the first set. And she was 10-0 in three-set matches. 

Their match pitted strength against strength. Stosur is one of the best servers on tour, and Azarenka has one of the best returns of serve. Until this match, Stosur was using her serve to great effect, with only 50 percent of her first serves returned by her opponents. 

That changed immediately in this match, with Azarenka clobbering her returns in the very first game to break Stosur. That dominance did not let up in the first set, which was interrupted by a rain delay that lasted just over an hour. It was not until the second set that Stosur gained any sort of traction in the match, breaking Azarenka’s serve in the first game. 

Even though Azarenka got the break back, Stosur had found some weaknesses. She grabbed another break and played powerfully in winning the second set. 

The third set was wobbly for both players, who traded four breaks of serve and seemed to squander momentum at every turn. The final twist, though, did not come until the dramatic tiebreaker, when Azarenka shook off her errors to come out on top. 

“She never gives up,” Stosur said of Azarenka. “She fights very hard every single match she plays, and she does it very well. That’s probably part of the reason she’s No. 1 at the moment. She’s one of the players you have to get out there, and she barely gives you any points and you have to work hard for every single point you get.” 

That has been in keeping with Azarenka’s year, which started with her first Grand Slam victory at the Australian Open. That lifted Azarenka, who is from Belarus, into the No. 1 ranking. She followed with two more tournament titles, including topping Stosur in Doha and winning at Indian Wells. She was bounced from the French Open in the fourth round by Dominika Cibulkova and lost in the semifinals of Wimbledon to Serena Williams. 

She made it to the semifinals of the Olympics before again losing to Williams, and she blamed the quick turnaround when she retired in the first match of her only hardcourt warm-up tournament, the Rogers Cup in Montreal. 

But this victory keeps Azarenka in the No. 1 ranking.