Dinara Safina survives, Jelena Dokic’s fairytale continues

Third seed Dinara Safina saved match points before reaching the Australian Open quarterfinals where she will face world No.187 Jelena Dokic, who has continued her dream run.

Safina beat French 15th seed Alize Cornet 6-2 2-6 7-5. Cornet surrendered a double break in the final set and two match points as the Russian dug herself out of trouble and took the win, which made Cornet slump in a chair in tears.

“Somebody needs to smack me so hard in my head that something finally shakes and I put the cables together,” said the world No.3 Safina.

Australia’s comeback player Jelena Dokic continued to delight the tennis world and excite the Australian Open spectators by practically coming out of nowhere and reaching the quarterfinals. Her latest victory came over Russian 29th seed Alisa Kleybanova, who upset world No.5 Ana Ivanovic in the third round. Dokic defeated Kleybanova 7-5 5-7 8-6.

As already mentioned, one of the quarterfinals will feature Dokic and Safina. The two have actually played each other. Six years ago in Shanghai, Safina defeated Dokic 6-1 6-4. I said “actually played each other” because the 25-year-old Dokic had never before met with any of her previous opponents at the 2009 Australian Open, including Tamira Paszek, Anna Chakvetadze, Caroline Wozniacki, and Alisa Kleybanova, because of her very long absence from tennis.

In an all-Russian fourth-round match, seventh seed Vera Zvonareva set up a quarterfinal against Bartoli with a 7-5 6-4 victory over 10th seed Nadia Petrova. Bartoli crushed top seed Jelena Jankovic, who became the third Australian Open top seed in the Open Era to fall before the quarters.