Top seed Justine Henin of Belgium reached the last 16 of the Australian Open on Friday with a hard-fought 7-5 6-4 win over seed No.25 Francesca Schiavone of Italy.
Schiavone was concentrated and performed very well, but you need to be perfect if you want to defeat Henin, even if she is not playing her best tennis, which was the case on Friday.
There were five service breaks in the first set, and three of them went to Henin so she won the close opening set. In seemed that Henin would easily win the second set as she was 4-1 up, but Schiavone battled back and had two break points to level at 5-5. Still, Schiavone could not convert and and Henin closed out the match with three straight points.
In the fourth round, Justine Henin will face Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei before a possible meeting with Maria Sharapova.
Fran always pushes Henin. She is one of the few who knows how to. Doesn’t help her, though.