2010 was one hell of a year for Sabine. While she emerged in 2009 as a powerful young gun, 2010 saw her momentum shocked with a string of injuries that killed any momentum or consistency she could gain from win to win, or tournament to tournament.

Here’s hoping 2011 is a different story for the cutest thing to hit Facebook ever. She needed some serious fight to survive Sania in a third set tiebreak just to qualify for Auckland, and Tuesday knocked out fellow qualifier Molinero 6-1, 6-3.

I couldn’t see her match today because it wasn’t on centre, but she fired off 10 aces (to just one double fault) and was 88% off the first serve (just dropping 3 points total off of it) and wasn’t broken. Those are some damn good numbers considering what she had to do to get in.

Against Sania, she was mostly going for her shots, and the pop from the forehand was definitely there. She’s also looking as fit as I’ve ever seen her, which is definitely a great sign. I’m not going to say that Sabine is going to explode into the top 20 over night, but these are some precious points that will hopefully keep her from having to qualify for other tournaments and giver her some momentum. Nice to see you back, ‘Bine.