Azarenka moves to last eight at Brisbane event

Brisbane - Fourth-seeded German Kerber advances to quarterfinals

After two injury-interrupted seasons, Victoria Azarenka is emerging from the shadows of some her highly-ranked rivals who have either withdrawn from Australian Open warmup events or lost in the early rounds.
The two-time Australian Open champion reached the quarterfinals of the Brisbane International - a tournament she won in 2009 - with a 6-3, 6-2 win over Ysaline Bonaventure. Bonaventure, a lucky loser from qualifying, was cast into the second round on Wednesday as a replacement for top-seeded Simona Halep, who had a bye before withdrawing from a scheduled second-round match with Azarenka because of an Achilles tendon problem.
Meanwhile, Azarenka, who dropped to a year-end No. 22 ranking in December after being restricted to just 23 events across 2014 and '15, is working her way back into form. Against Bonaventure, she conceded an early service break and had seven double-faults in the first set, but otherwise dominated after converting her fifth break-point chance in a fourth game that lasted more than 17 minutes and went to deuce 11 times.
Fourth-seeded Angelique Kerber beat Madison Brengle 6-3, 6-0 to set up a meeting with Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, while Petkovic had a 7-5, 6-4 win over Ekaterina Makarova to move into a last eight against U.S. qualifier Samantha Crawford, who had an upset 7-5, 7-5 win over seventh-seeded Belinda Bencic.
On the men's side, second-seeded Kei Nishikori advanced to the quarterfinals with a 6-3, 6-4 win over Mikhail Kukushkin in his first competitive outing of the season in Australia. Eighth-seeded Dominic Thiem advanced to the quarterfinals with a 6-3, 6-2 win over Denis Kudla.