Kaia Kanepi vs Aryna Sabalenka: Sabalenka to Thrash the Opponent

A year ago, Sabalenkalost to Canepi in Melbourne, not even at the Australian Open, but at an ordinary tournament. Now Aryna has an excellent chance to take revenge for that defeat and make the quarterfinals of the first Majors of the year.

In the first round of the Australian Open, Kanepi knocked out #20 Kerber. Everybody knows that the German is not what she was a couple of years ago. So don't put too much weight on this Estonian win. Then, Kanepi got lucky with the toss: #86 in the world Bouzková and #133 of WTA, Inglis, are not the top level of women's tennis. The Estonian has one of the strongest tennis players of our time ahead of her, dreaming of finally winning a Grand Slam trophy.

Three 3-sets matches in a row are a minus for Arina. However, in the preview for the game against Vondrousova, we noted that Sabalenka is noticeably gaining in the tournament course. We saw that in the match against Marketa, who incidentally was the pair's favourite. Vondrousova beat Arina in the first game, and it only fuelled the Belarusian. In the second set, Arina seized the initiative, and in the third game, she crushed her opponent 6:1. The thesis that Arina is gaining fit was confirmed, respectively, there is no doubt that we will see Sabalenkain in the next round of the majors.

A lot comes together in favour of the Belarusian in the upcoming game. Arina lost to Kaia a year ago, but Sabalenkaregularly gets off to a poor start to the season. She hasn't had a good start in 2022 either, with a terrible performance in Adelaide and a stubborn beginning in Melbourne. However, already match against Wang in the second round showed that Arina is gaining. The confrontation with Vondrousova only confirmed this thesis. We believe that Sabalenka will progress in Melbourne and take confident revenge on Kanepi for the defeat in February 2021.