Third-seeded Victoria Azarenka of Belarus made a poor start to the match as she got broken early on in the first-set, but she quickly got into a counter-attack mode and did not stop until she earned a straight sets 6-3 6-0 victory over former World No. 1 Maria Sharapova of Russia in the final of the 2012 Australian Open on Saturday and won her maiden Grand Slam title. With this victory, the twenty two years old Azarenka became the first Belarusian to win a Grand Slam title. In fact, Azarenka will also become the new World No. 1 when the rankings will be released on Monday. The Belarusian did not allow the Russian to come anywhere near to her best and earned this easy victory – in the end. It was one of the most dominant performance in the Australian Open final in the recent times.

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Azarenka won this battle in just 1 hour and 22 minutes, as she mustered 71% points on her first serve and hammered 14 winners. But, the big difference was unforced errors, as the Belarusian committed only 12 unforced errors as compared to Sharapova’s 30 – which decided the fate of this encounter. In the end, Azarenka converted 5 out of 7 break-points, while the Russian could convert only 1 out of 4 break-points.

After 46 minutes of high intensity tennis, Azarenka clinched the first-set. The Belarusian made up for the feeble start by opting for a counter-attack and it paid off well in the end.  Azarenka could hammer only 8 winners, but she committed 9 unforced errors as compared to Sharapova's 15.  Azarenka also converted 2 out of 3 break-points to win the first set by mustering 35 points in total as compared to Sharapova's 26. Azarenka took the momentum of the first set into second and raced to a 5-0 lead before the Russian had a break-back point, but Azarenka did not allow that and ran away with the match.