BRISBANE: Aryna Sabalenka said her much-vaunted exhibition match against Nick Kyrgios paid dividends as she destroyed Christina Butsa on Tuesday to kick-start her Australian Open preparations.
The world number one took just 48 minutes to see off the Spaniard 6-0, 6-1 in the second round of the season-opening Brisbane International.
The ease of victory against the world number 50 will send a warning to Belarus’ opponents ahead of the Australian Open which starts on January 18.
She cruised through the first set in just 22 minutes and needed just 26 minutes to claim the second against an opponent who had no answer to the 27-year-old’s power.
Champalenka said playing so well in her first match of the season showed the December 28 exhibition in Dubai against the mercurial but controversial Kyrgios was worth it.
“I mean, when you’re playing against a guy, the intensity is completely different,” he said.
“Especially when there’s Nick, who drop-shots every other shot, so you’re moving around a lot, so there was a lot of physicality for me.
“And today I was, like, whoa, let’s move, you know. “This exhibition was fun. It was a big challenge,” he added.
“I think we brought so many eyes to tennis. It wasn’t about proving anything to anybody, it was about being able to show that tennis can be really huge.”
Sabalenka will now play either Jelena Ostapenko or Sorana Cirstea in the third round and remains on course to meet Madison Keys in the quarter-finals in a rematch of last year’s Australian Open final, won by the American.
Keys reached the third round of Brisbane with a 6-4, 6-3 win over fellow American McCartney Kessler.
Like Sabalenka, Keys had a second-round bye and said it was difficult to find her rhythm early on.
“I think sometimes it’s a little more difficult when the person you’re playing has already played a match and then you’re trying to knock the rust off a little bit,” he said.
“I felt like it took a while to find my rhythm, but I feel like once I did, I kind of settled in a little bit better.”
There were two big upsets in the men’s draw, with Spain’s second seed Alejandro Davidovic Fokina and Canada’s fifth seed Denis Shapovalov both losing.
American Brandon Nakashima downed Davydovich Fokina 7-6 (7/4), 6-4, while Belgian qualifier Raphael Collignon beat Shapovalov 6-4, 6-2.
a href=”https://www.geo.tv/latest/643504-sabalenka-says-battle-of-the-sexes-pays-off-after-ruthless-win”>Source link
