Roberta Vinci was fantastic this fortnight on Hisense Arena as she cruised past American Irina Falconi. Roberta played some stunning tennis with her slice backhand, pressuring the American's shots really well and with her forehand painting the lines.

Vinci races through the first set.

The match started with an exchange of holds. Falconi was trying to get more aggressive from the start to prevent Roberta from getting up to the net first. However, even though the American did not seem to get troubled by Vinci's typical slice, the US Open finalist was playing really clever tennis, pressuring Falconi with the backhand to get time to seize the ball with her forehand.

Roberta buit a 4-1 lead quickly, seeming to be in complete control of the match. In the same time, Falconi was really poor at the net, so she could not get advantage of her aggressive tries in general. After a hold from the American, Vinci raced through the next 2 games to close the set 6-2. Roberta played clever tennis and she had some moments of brilliance, finding some awesome forehands after setting up the point with the backhand.

Vinci repeats the same story in the second as well.

Roberta started the second part of the match as she ended the first, winning the first three games to build a 3-0 lead. The Italian seemed to have found her opponent's weaknesses and was exploiting them at its maximum. Also, she started serving a little better.

After a pair of holds, the Italian would break after a long game where she took advantage of her counterpart's errors, while she hit some beautiful winners on her own as well to make it 5-1. However, Roberta's serve seemed a little bit rusty in the next game, as she was unable to close the match, getting broken after losing match point. In another long game the American would hold for 5-3, before the 13th seed held to love after a flawless service game to seal the win and make it to round three. It was a really good match by the Italian who would equal her best Australian Open result.

The stats.

It was another good day at the office from the US Open runner-up who served well, winning 83 percent of the points behind her first serve. In the same time, she was really accurate at the net with 93 percent, while her opponent, even though she had 2 more approaches, had only 69 percent of the points. Also, Falconi hit an enormous number of unforced errors, with a total of 26, while Roberta kept them at just 12.

Vinci will now face Ana-Lena Friedsam who has reached her first Grand Slam third round this year in Melbourne.