Australian Open 2012 live stream

Pressure can be a hellish thing. Some people thrive under it, others – and that includes most of the human race – struggle with it.

For Dinara Safina, pressure has been a constant companion since she first emerged from the shadow of her famous brother, Marat, and started challenging for Grand Slam titles of her own. And that was the problem – she could challenge for them but not quite win them.

So far she has been in three finals, and each time she has frozen in the spotlight. Sometimes she has struggled to get to the final – as she did last year here, sweating it out for hours to get through the rounds – and sometimes she has galloped through the draw, but the end result is always the same.

On Friday, she had one of her easier days, whistling past Elena Baltacha 6-1 6-2 to reach the fourth round. It was a simple enough 57-minute workout against the world No.83 and all in all, Safina was pleased with her work. On a scale of one to 10, she was prepared to give herself a respectable seven.

“I think it was better than medium, so it was seven,” she said. “I still think that doesn't matter by the score that I had to win easier, but just in some moments in some games what I could do better. As more matches I'm going to play, I'm going to try to do more and more things and feel more and more comfortable on the court.”

Feeling comfortable on the court was something of an issue for Baltacha. After a career bedevilled by injuries and illness, Baltacha – or ‘Bally’ as she is known to one and all – finally broke into the world’s top 100 at the end of last year and now, at the age of 26, she is finally getting some reward for all her hard work. But having fought so hard to force her way up the rankings – and waited for 10 years to gain entry to the top 100 club – she knew that an early loss here would knock back out into the wilderness and send her ranking tumbling back down to 120 or 130.

That pressure almost did for her against Pauline Parmentier in the first round, but once she had scrambled through that match, the weight lifted from her shoulders and she was able to play with more freedom. Or she was until she ran into Safina.

To play at Rod Laver Arena against the world No.2 was a great experience – Baltacha just wished she could have made it last a little longer.

“I think overall this will be disappointing because I would have liked to have played much better,” she said. “I think I did under perform. I didn't show kind of my tennis that I know that I can play.

“But I've got to look in a very positive way. I put myself into a great situation. I've made the third round this week. I earned my place on Rod Laver today to play Safina, so I'm really proud of that.”

Safina could sympathise with Bally’s plight. She, too, has taken her time to find her own path on the world tour and she, too, has been pole-axed by nerves just when she thought she was on the verge of achieving something great. In many ways, Bally was a mini-Safina, and the world No.2 spotted the likeness immediately.

“I think it took her a while to break to the top hundred,” Safina said. “I think now she's in the right track. I think she found her team. This is the most important thing that was same happening to me: I was somewhere where I felt like I could be better, but I could not find the right people next to me. So I think she find the right team.

“I can say she broke top hundred, and I think she's better than she's ranked. So I think it just matters by time once she can get higher rank.”

Profiting from the departures of Maria Sharapova and Jelena Jankovic from her quarter of the draw, Safina knows that she just needs to relax, concentrate on the ball in front of her and try not to let her mind get too far ahead of itself. Everything is going swimmingly so far, and if she can just keep body and soul together, everything should be just fine.

In order to keep herself calm in the hurly-burly of the professional circuit, Safina has taken up cookery and currently is thumbing the pages of her latest purchase, the “Julie and Julia Cookbook” on her days off. But even then, the pressure will not go away. Cooking can be a fraught business, as Safina is learning all the time.

“I like cooking,” she said. “I'm having new apartment in Moscow. I'm like, Okay, instead of library of books, I'll have cookbooks. I want to cook. I'm just starting, you know. Until now nobody got sick, so this is the positive. They might like, not like, but if they have problems with the stomach, it's not good. But until now, nobody would complain about the stomach.”

That’s a relief, then: Safina is through to the fourth round without dropping a set and – so far, at least – has not poisoned anyone with her asparagus risotto. For the moment, the pressure in under control.