Serena stays on track for record title
Serena Williams is still on track in her bid to win a record 23rd grand slam title.
The six-time Australian Open winner beat fellow American Nicole Gibbs 6-1 6-3 in the third round yesterday when she didn’t face a break point until she was serving for the match.
Dropping serve in that game was her only lapse in a match that then extended just beyond the hour.
The 35-year-old said the victory, achieved in glorious sunshine, ‘‘felt really good’’ despite her off-court friendship with Gibbs.
‘‘She’s such an amazing person, especially off the court,’’ she said.
‘‘I always take every [opponent] super serious. I’m super focused. That’s what I do. It was really good to get this under my belt.’’
Williams started the tournament with difficult assignments in the first two rounds, but also got through those – against Belinda Bencic, with a career-high ranking of No 7, and Lucie Safarova, a French Open finalist in 2015 – without dropping a set.
She has set the tone for the tournament. Williams will next play No 16 Barbora Strycova, who beat No 21 Caroline Garcia 6-2 7-5.
Ekaterina Makarova led by a set and 4-0 but needed three sets and almost three hours to finally beat WTA Finals champion Dominika Cibulkova 6-2 6-7 (3) 6-3.
‘‘An amazing fight,’’ Makarova said of her first win over sixthseeded Cibulkova, the 2014 finalist at Melbourne Park. ‘‘I got, to be honest, a bit tight at 4-0 in the second set. But I’m still here.’’
In a momentum-swing match featuring some long streaks of games and 11 service breaks, Makarova got the decisive break in the eighth game of the deciding set and closed it next.
Makarova will face Johanna Konta in the round of 16, after she moved into the fourth round at Melbourne Park with a 6-3 6-1 win over former No 1 Caroline Wozniacki at Margaret Court Arena.
Konta, who made a surprise run to the semifinals at Melbourne Park last year, broke Wozniacki in the final game of the opening set.
Wozniacki then made life difficult for herself by double-faulting on break point to give Konta a 2-0 lead in the second.
Although Konta double-faulted on her first match point, she clinched it two points later when Wozniacki hit a backhand wide.
Wozniacki had come into the match in strong form, failing to drop a set in her first two matches and losing only seven games.
Mirjana Lucic-Baroni continued her unlikely run with a 3-6 6-2 6-3 win over Maria Sakkari, and so did American qualifier Jennifer Brady.
Before this week, the 34-year-old Lucic-Baroni hadn’t won a match at Melbourne Park since her debut at the Australian Open in 1998. The 19-year gap in between match wins at a grand slam tournament broke the record set by Kimiko DateKrumm, who went 17 years between match wins at Wimbledon.
Lucic-Baroni reached the semifinals of Wimbledon in 1999 as a 17-year-old and captured the Australian Open doubles title a year before that with Martina Hingis.
She next plays Brady, ranked No 116, who had never played in the main draw of a major before she qualified for this week.
The 21-year-old American had a 7-6 (4) 6-2 win over 14th-seeded Elena Vesnina on Show Court 2, and is making the most of the occasion.
By saving five match points before rallying to beat Heather Watson in the second round, Brady effectively doubled her number of career wins.
On the men’s side, No 8 Dominic Thiem beat Benoit Paire 6-1 4-6 6-4 6-4 to set up a fourth-round match against No 11 David Goffin, who ended Ivo Karlovic’s run, 6-3 6-2 6-4.
The 37-year-old Karlovic’s win in the first round set an endurance record – the 84 games in the win over Horacio Zeballos, which ended 22-20 in the fifth, was an Open-era mark for the tournament.