2 times Australian Open champion Victoria Azarenka beats Jessica Pegula to enter semifinals – Syka News
Victoria Azarenka beat Jessica Pegula 6-4, 6-1 on January 24, 2023 night to return to the semifinals at Melbourne Park, displaying the same confident brand of hard-hitting baseline tennis that propelled her to two Australian Open titles and the No. 1 ranking a decade ago.
Azarenka won the Australian Open in 2012 and 2013, but she hadn’t reached the final four there since.
Now 33 and a mother, Azarenka delivered big shot after big shot, raced to a 3-0 lead in 12 minutes, and never really let No. 3-seeded Pegula, a good friend, get into the match.
Her exit leaves No. 5 Aryna Sabalenka as the lone top-20 woman still in the bracket. On Wednesday, Sabalenka will play unseeded Donna Vekic in the quarterfinals, while No. 30 Karolina Pliskova faces unseeded Magda Linette.
Even when Pegula did win a game, she had to work hard for it, erasing six break points before finally holding serve. It was a far cry from Pegula’s earlier success in the tournament, when she entered Tuesday having dropped zero sets and 18 games in four previous matches.
Elena Rybakina, the reigning Wimbledon champion, will face Azarenka in the semifinals after defeating 2017 French Open champion Jelena Ostapenko 6-2, 6-4 on Tuesday afternoon.
Victora Azarenka celebrating after winning against Jessica Pegula
All ❤️ @AustralianOpen pic.twitter.com/v1m0KAVBw1
— victoria azarenka (@vika7) January 22, 2023
A three-time runner-up at the US Open, most recently in 2020, Azarenka has always performed best on hard courts, and this evening was no exception. She repeatedly outplayed Pegula in long forehand and backhand exchanges.
Pegula committed eight of the game’s first ten unforced errors.
Pegula would sigh, roll her eyes, and slump her shoulders after a few misses. She frequently looked into the stands at her coach, Davis Witt, to say something, including one exclamation about ball speed, “It’s so… slow!”
