Ascension must have crossed Agnieszka Radwanska's mind as she stepped on court to face Chanelle Scheepers. Radwanska's mission statement this weekend is clear: win this Rogers Cup title and rise to the world No. 1 ranking for the first time.
All went according to plan for one set, but Radwanska found herself facing an uphill climb down a break at 2-4 in the second set. The combination of Radwanska's precise point construction and Scheepers' inconsistency on pivotal points unsettled the 41st-ranked South African; Radwanska reeled off four consecutive games to close a 6-2, 6-4, sweep that sent her into the Rogers Cup quarterfinals for the first time in three years.
Top-ranked Victoria Azarenka retired from the tournament with a left knee injury and second-ranked Maria Sharapova never made it out of the gate, withdrawing with a stomach virus. Those departures open the door for Radwanska to take the top spot if she wins the title. This match was also a meaningful moment for the 28-year-old Scheepers, who spent several years toiling away on the Challenger circuit before winning her first WTA title at the age of 27 to crack the Top 40 for the first time last year.
The 5-foot-8, 123-pound Radwanska is hardly the most physically-imposing presence in the Top 10, but she anticipates shrewdly, reads the court with the ease of a woman reading the top line of an eye chart and effectively displaced a nervous Scheepers at the outset. A fine slice forehand winner gave Radwanska a break point and she broke at love for a 2-0 lead thanks to a horrid three-error game from her opponent. The pair traded breaks before Radwanska, knowing the net is not Scheepers' comfort zone, dipped a pair of passes that forced the South African to volley up. The result was successive errors as Radwanska held for 4-1.
Playing much cleaner tennis, Radwanska moved Scheepers into the corners coaxing nearly three times as many unforced errors (17 to 6) in the opener, and occasionally dazzling, as she did with the tweener in the seventh game, to take the first set in 34 minutes.
Scheepers has never beaten a Top 20 opponent and managed just three games in an opening-round exit to No. 102 Magdalena Rybarikova in Washington, DC, last week. But she's got solid strokes and began to hit her forehand with more ambition, benefitting from successive Radwanska errors to convert her third break point in the first game of the second set.
Perhaps it was the sticky conditions, lingering fatigue from her grueling 4-6, 6-3, 7-6 (5) win over Mona Barthel in the second round, the increasing depth from her opponent or an effort to conserve energy knowing a second match loomed, but Radwanska lost the plot, over-playing her normally effective drop shot. Scheepers fought off three break points to hold for 2-0 and saved a break point in the sixth game for a 4-2 lead.
Radwanska plays the score more shrewdly than Scheepers, who double faulted at 30-all then missed a backhand long to surrender serve and fall to 4-all. Two games later, Radwanska sealed a 93-minute win.
Radwanska will get a break before returning to court later today for a quarterfinal match with 2011 French Open champion Li Na, who swept Roland Garros runner-up Sara Errani. The third-ranked Radwanska has won three of their five meetings, but Li won their lone hard-court clash, at the 2009 Monterrey tournament.