BRISBANE: Aryna Sabalenka mentioned her much-maligned exhibition match in opposition to Nick Kyrgios had paid dividends as she demolished Cristina Bucsa on Tuesday to launch her Australian Open preparations.
The world primary took simply 48 minutes to eliminate the Spaniard 6-0, 6-1 within the second spherical of the season-opening Brisbane Worldwide.
The benefit of the win in opposition to the world quantity 50 will ship a warning to the Belarusian’s rivals forward of the Australian Open beginning January 18.
She raced by way of the primary set in simply 22 minutes and took solely 26 minutes to say the second in opposition to an opponent who had no reply to the ability of the 27-year-old.
Sabalenka mentioned the truth that she performed so effectively in her first match of the season confirmed that the December 28 exhibition in Dubai in opposition to the mercurial however controversial Kyrgios was worthwhile.
“I imply, once you play in opposition to a man, the depth is totally completely different,” she mentioned.
“Particularly when there may be Nick, who’s drop-shotting each different shot, so you progress lots, so there was an ideal health for me.
“And right now I used to be, like, whew, let’s transfer round, you already know. “That exhibition, it was enjoyable. It was an ideal problem,” she added.
“I believe we introduced so many eyes on tennis. It wasn’t about proving one thing to anybody, it was capable of present that tennis could be actually enormous.”
Sabalenka will now play both Jelena Ostapenko or Sorana Cirstea within the third spherical and stays on monitor to fulfill Madison Keys within the quarter-finals in a rematch of final 12 months’s Australian Open last, received by the American.
Keys reached the Brisbane third spherical with a 6-4, 6-3 win over fellow American McCartney Kessler.
Like Sabalenka, Keys had a bye into the second spherical and mentioned she had discovered it powerful to search out her rhythm early on.
“I believe it is typically slightly bit more durable when the particular person you are taking part in has already performed a match, and then you definately’re form of attempting to nonetheless knock off a little bit of the rust,” she mentioned.
“I felt prefer it took slightly bit simply to search out my rhythm, however I really feel like as soon as I did it, I form of settled in slightly bit higher.”
There have been two main upsets within the males’s draw, with second-seeded Spaniard Alejandro Davidovich Fokina and Canada’s fifth seed, Denis Shapovalov, each shedding.
American Brandon Nakashima downed Davidovich Fokina 7-6 (7/4), 6-4, whereas Belgian qualifier Raphael Collignon beat Shapovalov 6-4, 6-2.
