WOMEN’s doubles tennis ace Cara Black and her Australian partner Anastasia Rodionova will be hoping for a positive result when they open their campaign at the Australian Open in Melbourne today.
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The two, who were handed a wild card entry at the tournament, will get the ball rolling with a tricky tie against the Australian duo of Monique Adamczak and Stephanie Bengson.
If Black and Rodionova clear the first hurdle, they would have set a second round date against the unseeded pair of Japan’s Shuko Aoyama and Irina Falconi from the United States. Aoyama and Falconi caused one of the biggest upsets of the women’s doubles competition at the Australian Open after ousting the more fancied pairing of 11th seeds Vania King from US and Kazakhstan’s Yaroslava Shvedova 6-3, 5-7, 7-6 in straight sets yesterday.
Black and Rodionova will be confident of doing well in Australia after winning the ASB Classic in New Zealand early this month. The pair will also be hoping to improve from their last appearance at the Australian Open in 2011 where they reached the quarter-finals before losing to Liezel Huber and Nadia Petrova.
The duo were using the tournament in New Zealand to prepare for the much tougher Australian Open, where Black will be making her first Grand Slam appearance since giving birth to her first child last April.
Black, who last participated in a Grand Slam tennis tournament at Wimbledon in 2011, has fond memories of the Australian Open where she won the women’s doubles in 2007 with former partner Huber and the mixed doubles in 2010 with India’s Leander Paes.
