Poland’s Agnieszka Radwanska, the player who stunned defending champion Maria Sharapova in the third round of the 2007 US Open, scored her second major Grand Slam upset with a 6-3 6-4 win over second seed Svetlana Kuznetsova to reach the last 16 at the Australian Open.
Radwanska, seeded 29th, raced into a 3-0 lead in the first set. Although Kuznetsova quickly leveled, her inconsistency returned and the confident Krakow teenager took three straight games to win the first set. The 18-year-old Radwanska rallied from 0-3 down in the second to take a 4-3 advantage, and after Kuznetsova tied, Radwanska took the final two games to score the victory.
“I was not playing against her, I was playing against me,” said extremely disappointed Kuznetsova, who believed to be better prepared than even for the Australian Open. However, Radwanska believes that her determination was what gave her the victory: “I played against her a few times, always losing, so I said ‘no more’.”
In the fourth round Radwanska will play either 14th seed Nadia Petrova or Ekaterina Makarova.