Angelique Kerber and Victoria Azarenka won their Friday’s Brisbane International semifinals and now they are about to fight to enrich their careers with a big WTA title — the German will try to win her fifth Premier tournament in nine months, while the Belarusian will go for her first title in almost two and a half years.
In the first semifinal, the world No.10 Kerber displayed solid performance against Carla Suarez Navarro, holding serve throughout the match and being equally powerful on defense and offence which resulted in a confident 6-2 6-3 victory.
In the second semifinal, the star of the tournament Samantha Crawford had no more gas left in her tank and Victoria Azarenka swept past her 6-0 6-3. After playing three qualifying matches and then beating wildcard Priscilla Hon in the first round, seventh seed Belinda Bencic in the second round and Andrea Petkovic in the quarterfinals, it’s no wonder that nerves and exhaustion crept in against the two-time Grand Slam champion.
Even though Kerber has recently won so many high-profile titles and she’s ranked 12 spots above Azarenka, take note that the Belarusian leads their head-to-head record 5-0, including their last match at the 2015 US Open!
Stay tuned, soon our photographer Jimmie48 will post his today’s photos from Brisbane. In the meantime, check out his galleries from the previous days:
- Thursday: Brisbane WTA quarterfinals
- Wednesday: Samantha Crawford, Belinda Bencic, Angelique Kerber, Andrea Petkovic, Varvara Lepchenko, Garbine Muguruza, etc.
- Tuesday: Withdrawals of Sharapova and Halep, Vinci’s victory and more
- Monday: More first-round action (Jankovic, Bencic, Kerber, Stosur, Azarenka, and more)
- Sunday: Spongebob, slime and first-round tennis (Azarenka, Muguruza, Petkovic, Cibulkova, and more)
- Saturday: Qualifying + practice sessions (Azarenka, Muguruza, Bencic, Pavlyuchenkova, and more)
- Friday: Qualifying + practices + draw ceremony (Halep, Sharapova, Hantuchova, and more)
- Thursday: WTA stars getting ready for the new season (Muguruza, Azarenka, Sharapova, Bencic)
