Victoria Azarenka extended her unbeaten start to the season with a 6-3 6-1 defeat of Simona Halep in the Qatar Total Open on Thursday.
The world No. 1, a status she achieved when winning the Australian Open, had never before faced Halep and took a little time to size up her opponent. Halep worked an early break of serve, but Azarenka did not take long to find her stride and powered through the opening set.
Halep fought hard in the second but found Azarenka in fine form and the scoreline did not reflect the play from the Romanian who made the world No. 1 work hard to secure her 14th win on the spin.
She was soon joined in the next round of the competition by third seed Sam Stosur, as the Australian took care of business against Petra Cetkovska.
Cetkovska never really had control of her serve and that was all that Stosur needed, as she mercilessly picked off breaks of serve to cruise to a 6-3 6-2 victory despite hardly being at her best herself.
No. 4 seed Agnieszka Radwanska continued her fine run with a 7-5 6-1 win over Varvara Lepchenko, while Christina McHale was too good for Shahar Peer - winning 4-6 6-3 6-4.
Fifth seed Marion Bartoli also defeated Tsvetana Pironkova 6-3 6-3 to go through, on a day whereSventlana Kuznetsova was the only seeded casualty - the Russian losing to Lucie Safarova 7-6(8) 6-3.
Finally, Yanina Wickmayer beat Ksenia Pervak 6-4 6-0, as Romania's Monica Niculescu defeated qualifier Kateryna Bondarenko 7-5(5) 6-4.
