By Chris Oddo | Wednesday, August 11, 2015
Victoria Azarenka notched her first Top-4 win in nearly two years by taking out Petra Kvitova in Toronto.
Vaughn Ridley/Getty.
The third and fourth seeds at the Rogers Cup were knocked out on Wednesday in a pair of upsets on paper that really weren’t all that surprising in reality.
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Fourth-seeded Caroline Wozniacki fell for the third straight time to rising Swiss Belinda Bencic, 7-5, 7-5, during the afternoon, while third-seeded Petra Kvitova was stung by unseeded Victoria Azarenka, 6-2, 6-3.
For Azarenka the victory marked her first Top-4 win in nearly two years. For Kvitova, the loss marked her first attempt to compete since being diagnosed with mononucleosis after Wimbledon. Against an in-form Azarenka, a player who seems to be on the cusp of a return to elite status, Kvitova said she was simply pleased to have gone the distance.
Azarenka has yet to drop a set in Toronto against two Top-15 players. She defeated Elina Svitolina in the first round on Tuesday, and will next face Italy’s Sara Errani in the round of 16.
Wozniacki’s loss to Bencic drops her record on North American hard courts to 0-2 this summer. Worse, the Dane has been nursing a leg injury that requires a thick layer of tape from ankle to knee. Today her fitness was put to the test by a patient, steady attack from Bencic. Though the match was extremely tight, Bencic had the upper hand on most of the big points.
Bencic’s win sets up a round of 16 clash with Sabine Lisicki on Thursday. The German hammered 27 aces past Bencic in their last meeting, which ended in a 6-1, 7-6(4) victory for Lisicki that saw her break the WTA record for aces in a match.
“I hope Sabine does not do that tomorrow,” Bencic said with a chuckle in an on-court interview after her match. “I think she has the record so it’s fine, she can serve normal and I will try to get some balls back.”
The rest of the round of 16 shapes up as follows in Toronto: