Few considered Agnieszka Radwanska a real threat against Victoria Azarenka ahead of their Australian Open 2014 quarterfinal.
Azarenka was the two-time defending champion at Melbourne Park and had marched into the last eight in 2014 without dropping a set. She had also beaten Radwanska in their past seven meetings, and won 11 of their past 12.
Radwanska’s subsequent performance is the stuff of legend – she produced arguably the best tennis of her career to end Azarenka’s 18-match winning streak at the AO.
This match is now available to watch in full on the Australian Open YouTube channel, one of a growing number of full matches uploaded to the channel from the archives.
Almost 10 years have elapsed since Radwanska unravelled Azarenka 6-1 5-7 6-0, a triumph which drew rave reviews at the time.
The Guardian’s Kevin Mitchell described it as “tennis from another planet”. Reuters reported that “Radwanska raised huge roars from the terraces with a succession of exquisite points”. Peter Bodo of tennis.com wrote that “it was two hours of bliss for romantics and dreamers”.
WTA Insider senior writer Courtney Nguyen was watching, too, and she told ausopen.com that it remains one of her favourite matches of all time.
"It would not surprise me if she were to say this is the greatest match she's ever played,” Nguyen said of Radwanska.
"What I remember about it was just I think being awestruck.
"You have to remember where Azarenka was coming into the Australian Open that year… I think that my awe, in watching Aga do what she did to pick apart Vika, has a lot to do with my respect for what Vika can do on the courts at Melbourne Park.
“And just not thinking that what Aga was doing was possible. Which was, making Azarenka look bad at tennis for stretches of that match.”
This was all the more staggering because Azarenka was fast becoming one of the Australian Open’s more dominant champions.
Her 2012 victory, completed with a thumping 6-3 6-0 win over Maria Sharapova in the final, catapulted her to world No.1. She defended her title in 2013 – and remains the last woman to do so at Melbourne Park.
By advancing to the quarterfinals in 2014, Azarenka had won 36 of her last 40 sets at the AO. Of her 18 straight wins, 17 had come at Rod Laver Arena, where she was facing Radwanska.
Then ranked world No.2, she had also won 12 consecutive sets against her Polish opponent.
Radwanska snapped that streak by winning a one-sided first set. But when Azarenka rebounded to take the second, the match-up appeared to be resuming a familiar pattern.
The third-set bagel blew that assumption out of the water.
It was the first time in almost four years Azarenka had lost a set 6-0. And it has only happened four times in the 10 years since.
Radwanska achieved this feat with simply sublime tennis; there are rallies which will resurface on highlight reels for decades.
Nguyen, writing for Sports Illustrated at the time, admitted she could not easily see what made Radwanska such a unique talent when the Pole was establishing herself on tour.
This was the match which helped her understand “the method to the madness”.
"I just remember that match being the quintessential display of Aga playing five-dimensional chess. She is seeing four shots ahead, or four decisions ahead. If I do this, you'll do this,” Nguyen recalled.
“She does it all the time, but on that stage, against that opponent, in that arena, on that day, it just felt, like, revelatory.
“Everything that you saw in pieces, over time, it was there for two sets, where you just were like: 'That's it. That is the greatest thing I've ever seen’.”
Radwanska agreed.
“This is for sure one of the greatest matches at the slam,” she assessed. “Especially the third set was unbelievable. I really cannot complain about anything.”
The win propelled the world No.5 into her first AO semifinal, where 24th-ranked Dominika Cibulkova awaited.
Radwanska was now just two match wins from a first Grand Slam singles title, after coming so close at Wimbledon in 2012 and 2013. Yet Cibulkova was ready, taking advantage of a flat performance to cruise to a 6-1 6-2 win.
Radwanska said she felt like she was in slow motion, lacking freshness.
The comedown after her masterclass against Azarenka made sense to Nguyen.
“If Aga could do that all the time, she wouldn't have been Aga,” she said.
“It wouldn't have felt revelatory, because you would have seen that level of tennis happen all the time.
"That was always Aga's struggle throughout her career, maintaining that level, from match to match to match. Sometimes it did just depend on which way the wind was blowing that day.
"That's what makes those performances so special – it's lightning in a bottle.”