American spoils Serena vs. No. 1
WIMBLEDON, England — The quarterfinal everyone expected, a dream battle pitting newly minted women’s No. 1 Ashleigh Barty against Serena Williams, seemed ohso-very-close as play began at the All England Club on Monday morning.
Williams seemed a safe bet to do her part. She was facing Carla Suarez Navarro, to whom she had never lost a set in six previous matches.
All Barty, playing two hours before Williams, had to do was emerge victorious from her match against Alison Riske, an unheralded American veteran who was ranked 55th and had never made so much as a dent at a tennis Grand Slam event.
But Riske had other plans. A 29-year-old Pittsburgh native with an energetic personality and a punishing game on grass, Riske upset Barty 3-6, 6-2, 6-3, setting the tone for long stretches with hard, flat ground strokes and aggressive volleys.
She now plays Williams, who dispatched Suarez 6-2, 6-2. And after yet another day of plot twists in the women’s draw, Williams has suddenly emerged as a favorite to win the tournament.
With the losses of Barty, No. 3 Karolina Pliskova and No. 6 Petra Kvitova on Monday, the top six women’s seeds have been eliminated. Wimbledon sensation Coco Gauff, a 15-year-old American, also had her run come to an end by losing to No. 7 seed Simona Halep 6-3, 6-3. Halep is the highest remaining seed.
Riske, who has beaten three seeded players already, is vowing to keep slaying seeds.
“I’m here to stay,” said Riske said, barely able to hide her happiness. “The fact that it’s at Wimbledon, my favorite Grand Slam, the place that I had always dreamed to be in the last eight, they can’t kick me out now.”
She is in a major quarterfinal for the first time in her career, but she initially looked as if she would be overwhelmed Monday.
Barty started off by striking four clean aces, each straight down the T. She had entered this fourth-round fight riding a 15-match winning streak during which she won the French Open and a Wimbledon tuneup tournament. In the process, she became the first Australian woman since Evonne Goolagong Cawley in 1976 to be ranked No. 1.
She took the first set in 32 minutes, but Riske has been a strong grass-court player throughout her career and won a tournament on the surface last month.
She gathered herself and began imposing her will, playing often to Barty’s dangerous backhand. Riske put the pressure on her top-ranked opponent by coming to the net 27 times and winning 74% of those points.
Barty seemed about to edge ahead early in the third set after earning a break point. But Riske fought off the danger with a tightrope rally that she finished off with a backhand volley winner. Not long afterward, she served for the match, winning it after forcing a Barty ground stroke to fall meekly wide.
“I didn’t play a poor match,” Barty said. “When I needed to, when the big moments were there, Alison played better. Tough one to swallow, but I lost to a better player.”
Riske is not usually better than Barty — her career-high ranking is No. 36, in 2017 — but on this day she certainly competed with more fire.
“The biggest key for me has just been to battle from start to finish of every match that I’ve been a part of,” Riske said, speaking of a run here that has not only been surprising, but deeply taxing.
She won her previous three matches in three sets, including a 9-7 third set in her second-round win over Ivana Jorovic. Riske has now beaten the No. 1, No. 13 and No. 22 seeds at this tournament.
The 11th-seeded Williams, a seven-time Wimbledon singles champion, will be her next task today. Before the tournament, there was plenty of talk about how Williams, 37, had found herself in the toughest slice of the women’s singles draw.
She has not been in peak form since returning to tour in March 2018 after the birth of her daughter. This season, she struggled with a knee injury for months and was upset in the third round of the French Open in June.
How would she survive the so-called Quarter of Death, which featured not just Barty, but also three former No. 1s and Wimbledon champions: Garbine Muguruza, Maria Sharapova and Angelique Kerber?
By the end of play Monday, all of the aforementioned challengers had fallen.
Against Halep, Gauff knew her captivating Wimbledon ride at age 15 was nearing its conclusion late in the match.
The thousands of spectators at Court No. realized it, too, so they made sure to show their appreciation for the youngest qualifier at the All England Club in the professional era and youngest Week 2 participant since 1991.
Fans, most of whom probably hadn’t heard of Gauff until last week, rose and roared as she fended off the initial two match points she faced against the 2018 French Open champion. It was reminiscent of the way Gauff began a comeback victory in her previous match. This time, though, Gauff could not come through, beaten by the older, more experienced Halep 6-3, 6-3.
“It was really surprising, because you don’t really expect this kind of support when you’re in another country, not your home country,” said Gauff, who beat Venus Williams in the first round for quite a Grand Slam tournament debut. “I really did feel like I was probably playing in New York. I’m just really happy that people believe in me.”
“I wasn’t feeling my best, I wasn’t playing my best,” Gauff said as she wiped away tears at her news conference, where she noted she wasn’t sure why she needed a visit from a doctor in the second set, “but they were still supporting me, no matter what.”
The men’s quarterfinals Wednesday are No. 1 Novak Djokovic vs. No. 21 David Goffin; No. 2 Roger Federer vs. No. 8 Kei Nishikori; No. 3 Rafael Nadal against 65th-ranked Sam Querrey; and No. 23 Roberto Bautista Agut against No. 26 Guido Pella.
Djokovic, Federer and Nadal all won in straight sets and are all in the quarters of a major tournament for the 24th time; one member of the Big Three won the title at 20 of those.
Querrey hit 25 aces and saved all four break points he faced to get past Tennys Sandgren 6-4, 6-7 (7), 7-6 (3), 7-6 (5) in the first all-American men’s Week 2 matchup at Wimbledon in 19 years. Pella erased a two-set deficit to edge 2016 runner-up Milos Raonic 3-6, 4-6, 6-3, 7-6 (3), 8-6.