UPDATE 10pm: Top seed Maria Sharapova opened her 2015 season in a flurry on Pat Rafter Arena Tuesday night, thumping Kazakhstan’s Yaroslava Shvedova 6-0 6-1 at the Brisbane International.
The Russian stormed through the first set of the second-round encounter without dropping a game after just 23 minutes and led 3-0 in the second set with a double bagel looking ominous for former world No.25 Shvedova.
Buoyed on by a crowd getting behind the underdog, she finally stemmed the flow of games, holding serve to get on the board for 1-3, drawing a roar of approval and a grin as she fist pumped the air above.
Sharapova fought off two break points in the following game to ease the threat of any second-set comeback, going on to break for 5-1 after a lengthy struggle on the Shvedova serve before sealing it after 1h 03 mins.
With her last competitive match coming at a WTA Finals event in Singapore at the end of October, the five-time grand slam winner was more than pleased with her opening round showing.
“It certainly felt good to start, you know, after not playing a match for a couple of months,” Sharapova said.
“Despite all the training, it’s such a different feeling to go out on the court and play in front of a crowd in an actual match atmosphere.
“She’s already had a few matches in this tournament, whereas this is my first one. I just wanted to start off really well, and I think I did a good job of that.”
There would be no repeat performance of Shvedova’s round one Brisbane International match, where the 27-year-old came back from a 0-6 first set to upset Sabine Lisicki in three.
“She’s capable of playing really tough tennis,” Sharapova said.
“She’s a big server, big strokes. Even though we haven’t played in a while, she does like to play the top players.”
Sharapova will play the winner of Mirjana Lucic-Baroni or Spanish sixth-seed Carla Suarez-Navarro in the quarterfinal.
“If Suarez-Navarro wins the next one… it a little bit of a different game, maybe a bit more of a physical match,” she said.
“We’ll see how that goes. Hopefully I continue to improve and take it a step further this year.”
> Watch match highlights here (only available outside Australia):