Melbourne: A flustered Maria Sharapova survived a huge scare to advance to the third round at the Australian Open on Wednesday.
The second seeded Russian had a meltdown as the heat was turned up in Melbourne and had to dig deep to save two match points before staging an epic comeback to beat courageous compatriot Alexandra Panova 6-1, 4-6, 7-5.
Sharapova, who can unseat Serena Williams as world number one if she wins the title, wilted badly after winning the opening set, firing a slew of unforced errors that almost had her on an early plane home.
“I didn’t actually want to be out here for two-and-a-half hours, but that’s sometimes the way it goes on days when you’re not playing your best — sometimes it’s good enough just to get through,” she said.
“I was one point away from being out of this tournament twice today and not playing my best tennis, so I’m just happy I was able to win that last point.”
The five-time Grand Slam champion, red-faced from the heat, trailed 4-1 in the deciding set and looked out for the count, but rallied to save two match points when down 4-5.
Panova, a qualifier, kept pressing, but the world number two had the bit between her teeth and used her considerable experience to hang on and set up a third round tie against Kazakh Zarina Diyas.
Later, rising star Eugenie Bouchard — a potential quarter-final opponent for Sharapova — demolished Dutchwoman Kiki Bertens 6-0, 6-3 to power into the third round as she hunts for a maiden Grand Slam title.
The Canadian seventh seed confirmed her growing status with the most one-sided display seen so far at this year’s season-opening Grand Slam, utterly dominating an opponent ranked 72 in the world.
Cheered on by the “Eugenie Army”, Bouchard overwhelmed Bertens from the outset, hitting 10 winners to three as she ran away with the first set 6-0 after 23 minutes.
Her dominance continued in the second, although Bertens at least managed get on the scoreboard with three games to avoid the dreaded “double bagel”.
“I lost my focus a little bit and that’s really unacceptable, I’ll make sure that doesn’t happen again and make it quicker for you guys,” the Canadian joked.
“I’m really hard on myself, a bit of a perfectionist — that’s a good quality, no?”
Her round three opponent will be world number 36 Caroline Garcia of France, who beat the Canadian in their only previous meeting last year at the Acapulco quarter-finals.
