Victoria Azarenka: the Lady Djokovic?

Is Victoria Azarenka the new Novak Djokovic? We’ll get to that question later in the article.

While the ATP players are fighting it out at Basel and Valencia to secure the much-coveted final few berths left to play the year-end Barclays ATP World Tour Finals, the creme de la creme of the WTA circuit are already busy determining the who’s who at the year end championships at Istanbul, Turkey. After two days of action in the ongoing round robin phase, there have not been any upsets: top seeds Azarenka, Maria Sharapova and Serena Williams have progressed unscathed; with a win and a loss against her name, Agnieszka Radwanska is close on the heels of the top 3 after following her win with a hard-fought loss at the hands of Sharapova. Even after a valiant attempt against Vika (in one of the matches of the year), Championships debutante Angelique Kerber is staring down the barrel after two defeats. Sara Errani, Li Na and defending champion Petra Kvitova (who has been replaced by Samantha Stosur due to a viral illness) are yet to open their ‘win account’ in their groups. The action today and tomorrow will heat things up; we’ll have to wait and see if one or more of the second-4 can dash the hopes of at least one member of the top-4!

Vika saved 2 M.P.s, Nole style!, in her win against Kerber at Istanbul

Now, to the match of the tournament so far and later, a digression towards focusing on the Lady match point-saver Victoria Azarenka!

In her first match of the championships this year, World No.1 Victoria Azarenka, fresh from titles at Linz and Beijing, played a marathon 3-setter against Kerber. After losing the first set tiebreaker at a 11-13, facing 4-5 15-40 in the second, she faced two match points! Taking a cue from her ‘match-point-save-in-vain’ in the Istanbul final last year against Kvitova and a leaf out of Nole’s book (titled perhaps ‘How to save match points’?), she saved both match points she faced, won the second set breaker by a convincing 7-2 scoreline and furthered her authority on the year end No. 1 ranking position by clinching the 3rd set 6-4. She now needs one more win at Istanbul to guarantee herself the stay at the rankings pent-house, irrespective of how World No. 2 Sharapova fares in the reminder of her matches.

Back to back titles, dancing and enjoying at the trophy ceremony, year end No.1-to-be, saver of match points: do all these points not take your minds to another tennis player of another gender from another country, playing perhaps like he’s from another planet? The guy named Novak Djokovic? A closer look at not just the recent past but at a 1-2 year time frame shows a lot more striking similarities Vika and Nole’s careers have had.

Here are some:

• Both Nole and Vika had their first Grand Slam triumph at the Rod Laver Arena, Australian Open.
• Both have saved match points against past champions at Flushing Meadows, sending the crowd into frenzy at the US Open (Nole in ’10 and ’11 against Federer; Vika in ’12 against Stosur)
• Both have had some good streaks in the past 2 years (Nole with his 43-match streak in ’11; Vika with her 26-match streak in ’12)
• Both are crowd-pleasers and have had their share of famous post-victory celebrations
• Both reside in the princely and picturesque tax haven, Monte Carlo
• Both are popular twitterbugs on the social networking site and regularly post their hotel and airport pics; they like to give a slice of their private lives to their fans
• Both have had Olympic Singles medals (Nole with a silver in ’08; Vika with a Bronze in ’12)
• Both have a dubious record in terms of withdrawals or retirements from matches citing injuries (Nole was; Vika still is!)
• More than all these, the trollers on social network have tried proving how similar the facial features of the two are!

Looks like the two are made for each other! I’m sorry – ‘made like each other’, not for. Note the correction, Jelena Ristic and Sergei Bubka Jr.!

Here’s hoping that Azarenka breaks the shackles in her lop-sided H2H against Serena and comes up trumps in their coming encounters and lightens up the WTA circuit to make it shine even brighter, just like Nole did by reversing his trend against Rafa in 2011!