Justine Henin beats determined Fracesca Schiavone at Australian Open
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. (via BBC, photo Getty Images)
Cheered on by her Australian-based relatives and the local expatriate Serb community, fourth seed Ana Ivanovic crushed Italian world No.40 Tathiana Garbin 6-0, 6-3 to move into the third round of the Australian Open.
Venus Williams advanced to the Australian Open third round with an unimpressive 7-5 6-4 victory over France’s Camille Pin.
At the third day of the Australian Open, No.12 seed Nicole Vaidisova of Czech Republic defeated Australian Alicia Molik in straight sets 6-2 6-3 , and later
Lindsay Davenport was not a big challenge to fifth-seeded Maria Sharapova who defeated her 6-1 6-3 in little over an hour.
