Reuters
Poland’s Agnieszka Radwanska serves during her third round match against Puerto Rico’s Monica Puig at the Australian Open tennis tournament at Melbourne Park, Australia, January 22, 2016. REUTERS/Jason O’Brien
Reuters
Poland’s Agnieszka Radwanska serves during her third round match against Puerto Rico’s Monica Puig at the Australian Open tennis tournament at Melbourne Park, Australia, January 22, 2016. REUTERS/Jason O’Brien
MELBOURNE (Reuters) – Agnieszka Radwanska, playing through the pain of a leg injury, rode an opening set onslaught to take a place in the last 16 of the Australian Open with a 6-4 6-0 victory over Monica Puig on Friday.
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The fourth seed was forced to pull out of the Sydney warm-up because of her troublesome left leg and had lengthy medical treatment on it between the two sets in the 76-minute third round match.
“Pain is my second name,” the Pole said. “The spray doesn’t work, the strapping doesn’t work, I just have to get on with. I am used to it. I can still play my best tennis. You just have to deal with it.”
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Radwanska looked up against it when the big-hitting Puerto Rican broke for 4-3 in the first set on Margaret Court Arena but the Pole won the next three games to go 1-0 up before racing through the second stanza in just 27 minutes.
“She started really well,” the 26-year-old said. “I didn’t expect that. Everything was going really fast and she was playing with such intensity. I was in big trouble in that first set.”
Radwanska, a semi-finalist at Melbourne Park in 2014, next faces 21-year-old German Anna-Lena Friedsam, who beat last year’s U.S. Open runner up Roberta Vinci in the third round on Friday.
(Reporting by Nick Mulvenney, editing by Patrick Johnston)
