Victoria Azarenka of Belarus defeated Marion Bartoli of France in the women’s final of the Brisbane International on January 10, 2009. Azarenka won the match 6-3, 6-1.
This was Azarenka’s first tournament win on the WTA tour. The 19-year old has finished runner-up in her last four finals. Pictures from her winning match are below.

Radek Stepanek of the Czech Republic, celebrates his Brisbane International win by treating the crowd to a break-dancing number. He did the worm!
He defeated Fernando Verdasco of Spain 3-6, 6-3, 6-4 in this tournament, which is used by some of the top tennis players of the world for an Australian Open warm-up.
Stepanek, who is 30, is known as an unconventional player. He’s definitely comfortable at the net and has no problem with speed, some tricky angle shots and being a tad bit annoying to his rivals, as well as the crowd.

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Amelie Mauresmo thought that her injury issues were over, but unfortunately that was not the case for her in Brisbane. She was injured in the second game against Marion Bartoli and lasted 3 more before calling her trainer over and eventually defaulting.
On Friday, January 9th, Mauresmo commented about the injury.
“I kept going [initially] but I couldn’t really push off the serve like I really wanted. Even though it’s frustrating and it’s not how you want to end a tournament, I guess it’s more reasonable to make sure I’m 100 per cent for Melbourne.”
She still is …read more

Latvian Ernests Gulbis defeated Novak Djokovic at the Brisbane International tournament 6-4, 6-4. Despite this loss, Djokovic says he is still on track for his title defense. Those who were watching this match will agree that he never looked quite comfortable and Djokovic said there were a number of reasons why he didn’t play well.
"I didn’t play at all good today and I knew that the first match was going to be a very difficult one, especially if I played against a player who doesn’t give me a lot of rhythm," he said.
"I changed a lot of things so there’s …read more

The Brisbane International Tournament is in full swing and Serbia’s Ana Ivanovic had a tough time in her match against Czech teenager Petra Kvitova. Ivanovic came out on top and won 6-4 6-2. The first set took almost an hour for her to win.
Ivanovic told reporters "It is always tough, the first match. It was just a matter of hanging in and waiting for opportunities. I’m very happy to get this victory."
Here are the results for the first round of singles play on January 5th:
1) Ana Ivanovic (SRB) d. Petra Kvitova (CZE) 64 62 Sara Errani (ITA) …read more