Australian Open: Azarenka hammers teenager Osaka to reach fourth round

Azarenka next plays unseeded Czech Barbora Strycova, who earlier tore the bottom half of the draw wide open by dumping third seed Garbine Muguruza out of the tournament.

The 18-year-old Osaka, whose dad is from Haiti and mom from Japan and who was actually born in Osaka, qualified and hasn’t lost a set in her Grand Slam debut with wins over Donna Vekic and Elina Svitolina.

She knuckled down and against the Strycova serve in the third game, rallied from 40-love down to break back on a double fault and haul herself back into the match.

Strycova moves on to play two-time Australian Open champion Victoria Azarenka, who – incidentally – has knocked the Czech woman out of the tournament twice – in both 2014 and 2015.

“Clearly not my best, for sure”.

To go with the Hewitt snubbing, his name was misspelled on the on-court walls, and despite his status as the best player in the world, he was relegated to Margaret Court Arena on Friday night – the number two court at Melbourne Park.

She is yet to drop a set in 2016, having won in Brisbane and cantered through the first three rounds here.

Before Saturday she had only beaten two top five players in her 13 years on tour, and Muguruza had defeated her easily in their two previous encounters.

“It was my first time (to play her)”, said Azarenka. But, I don’t know, I think I just couldn’t find the court, my shots. “She’s a little unpredictable and she surprised me with her game”.

“Today’s victory was for that community and a quick recovery”. She also had only four winners, while the 14th seed had 24, six times as many as her opponents. No. 2 Simona Halep went out in the first round, while No. 3 Garbine Muguruza lost in the third round in the match before 14th-seeded Azarenka went on court.

The Australian Open is Azarenka’s most successful tournament having won at Melbourne previously in 2012 and 2013, her only grand slam wins. “I want to still keep improving from match to match, because it’s only getting harder from here”. “She was being smart”. Whilst this could be a close match Azarenka should be able to win this fairly comfortably, though we could get a further glimpse at the potential Naomi Osaka has.

Despite a sore throat, No. 4-seed Stan Wawrinka had no trouble with Czech Lukas Rosol on Saturday, rolling to a 6-2, 6-3, 7-6(3) victory in one hour and 55 minutes to set up a fourth round clash with Milos Raonic. “I think today is a very bad day, you know, at the office”, she said.

She says, “I don’t do bananas anymore”.

She had match points against Serena at Madrid past year and made the quarters at the last two grand slam events.