Azarenka or Sharapova, who will win the Melbourne final?
Our lucrative and highly professional contributor, Omair, prepared an analysis of the last singles match in the women's draw at the Australian Open, the final between Victoria Azarenka and Maria Sharapova. Enjoy the article and share your input in the comments!


Australian Open women's championship match will see two "ria's" facing each other, each trying to outgrunt the other. It will be one of the noisiest women's finals Australian Open has ever had, since both Maria and Victoria shriek loudly. My advice to the people intending to go and watch the match would be to take ear plugs with you or you might get your ears hurt. Ok enough of joking, let's see what we have in store for the final.
Seeing the form both players are taking into the final, it promises to be a great match. Both players have lost just two sets so far in the tournament, both losing one set in the quarterfinals and one in the semis. What is more interesting is that they both lost the same sets. Maria lost the first set in her quarterfinal against Sabine Lisicki, as did Azarenka against Radwanska. Maria lost the second set in her semifinal against Kvitova, as did Azarenka against Clijsters.
Both have not lost a match this year. Azarenka winning Sydney and carrying that momentum to the Australian Open, while Sharapova kick started her 2012 campaign at the Australian Open. Who will keep her winning streak intact in the final? Will it be Maria or Victoria? Read more »














One thing I am convinced on is that numbers don't lie, after the analyses I did for the first two quarterfinals. When Agnieszka Radwanska entered the match against Victoria Azarenka she was the cleaner player and she just had to play that way to beat Azarenka, but Azarenka was on fire, forcing Radwanska out of her comfort zone. Only if Radwanska had been able to reproduce those numbers in the quarterfinal she would have won, but she failed to do so. As for Wozniacki and Clijsters, the same thing happened to Wozniacki. The last Australian Open quarterfinal on the schedule pits two "ovas" against each other. One is Ekatarina Makarova and the other is Maria Sharapova.
Sharapova did not play any tune-up events in order to give her ankle, that she injured last year in her match against Kvitova, time to rest. Not even a single person considered Sharapova a title threat owing to her lack of play since her injury, and when the draw came out her chances of making it past the quarters looked even grimmer with a potential clash with Serena Williams in the quarterfinals, but here she is in the quarters and not against Williams but Williams' conqueror.


