Australian Open 2012: Sharapova vs. Azarenka Women's Final Will Be Test of Grit

As the Australian Open progressed, the popular consensus seemed to be that Kim Clijsters and Petra Kvitova were going to emerge from the women's bracket to meet in the final.

Victoria Azarenka and Maria Sharapova had other ideas.

Some might, but I won't go so far as to say that Azarenka upset Clijsters and Sharapova upset Kvitova. We're not talking about two players who are lucky to be in the final. We're talking about two players who are where they are because they went out and battled for it. They earned it.

Much has already been made of how similar Azarenka and Sharapova are. They're both hard hitters, they're both fierce competitors, and they're both a little on the loud side.

The auditory aspect is next to meaningless. The technical stuff is worth talking about, but the style matchup is so even that it's hard to determine where the advantages are. To use a football reference, this is match that cannot be illustrated by X's and O's.

In the end, what will determine this match is simply who wants it more. It sounds simple, but it's not.

Competitiveness is everything in tennis, but it's not something that can be taken for granted at every given moment. Competitiveness is a confidence thing, and confidence comes and goes in this sport.

Both Azarenka and Sharapova have been guilty of having fleeting confidence in their respective careers. We've seen Azarenka lose her temper on a number of occasions, a tendency that she seems to have corrected. Sharapova keeps her cool, but her body language is inconsistent. For the most part she's totally upbeat and clearly alert, and there are times when she broadcasts that she's not feeling too good about herself.

Between the two of them, I'm more worried about Sharapova in this match. She doesn't hold up very well when the ball is coming back at her as fast as she's hitting it, and Azarenka is one of the few players in the world who is up to the task. Kvitova is another, and she actually had her semifinal tilt against Sharapova under control for a good portion of the match.

Kvitova wasn't able to close the deal because she just plain wilted. There's no other way to explain it. She made too many mistakes and just made things too easy for Sharapova. Even after being dominated in the first set, Kvitova should have won, but she didn't.

Azarenka is not going to go down that path. She won't let Sharapova get off to a quick start, and she's going to keep battling Sharapova every step of the way. She wants her first Grand Slam just as badly as Sharapova wants her first Grand Slam since 2008, perhaps even more so.

There are two ways this match is going to unfold. I can't see an easy straight-sets victory for Sharapova, but I can see an easy straight-sets victory for Azarenka. We're either going to see that, or we're going to see a back-and-forth battle that goes this distance.

Then it will be a question of who blinks first.

As for who would win a match like that, well, I've already made my prediction.