San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Down but not out, Williams moves into quarterfinals
MELBOURNE, Australia — Serena Williams tumbled to the ground, her heavily taped right ankle twisting, her body contorting, her racket flying.
This was early in the second set of a competitiveascanbe matchup in the Australian Open’s fourth round against a younger version of herself — stinging serves, huge groundstroke cuts, a fierce streak — and during a stretch Sunday when things seemed to be slipping away.
Williams quickly put up a hand to indicate she was OK, got up to retie the laces of her right shoe and, while it took her a bit to regain control, she did just in the nick of time. Grabbing the last two games, Williams pulled out 64, 26, 64 victory over No. 7 seed Aryna Sabalenka to reach the quarterfinals at Melbourne Park.
“I am happy to get through that one. It wasn’t easy,” said Williams, who moved closer to an eighth Australian Open championship and recordtying 24th Grand Slam singles title overall. “She was teeing off on every shot.”
These two hit the ball hard, over and over again in Rod Laver Arena, exhibiting plenty of power. It’s just that Williams was barely better. She ended up with more winners, 3024, and more aces, 94, while cranking up her bestinthegame serve to as fast as 126 mph.
With the high quality of the match, the only shame was that no fans were there to see it in person. That’s because this was Day 2 of the fiveday lockdown imposed by the Victoria state government after some COVID19 cases emerged at a local hotel.
Up next, Williams is assured of facing another Grand Slam champion: Simona Halep or Iga Swiatek, who were to meet later Sunday night.
The other quarterfinal on that half of the draw is Naomi Osaka against unseeded 35yearold Hsieh Suwei of Taiwan.
Osaka barely got there, saving two match points and grabbing the last four games en route to edging Garbiñe Muguruza 46, 64, 75.
The thirdseeded Osaka returns to the quarterfinals of a tournament she won in 2019 for one of her three major trophies. Osaka ran her winning streak to 18 matches — a run that included a U.S. Open title in September — and put a stop to Muguruza’s own fine form of late.
Heading into Sunday, twotime major champion Muguruza had been broken only once in this Australian Open. She had dropped a total of 10 games through three matches.
But Osaka broke the 2020 runnerup’s serve five times on a cloudy day with the temperature in the mid60s.
“I was a bit intimidated, because I knew that she was playing really well coming into this match,” Osaka said. “In the stressful points, I feel like I just had to go within myself.”
The 71stranked Hsieh’s 64, 62 victory over 2019 French Open finalist Marketa Vondrousova made her the oldest woman to make her major quarterfinal debut in the professional era.
“I try to pretend I’m only 18 years old,” Hsieh joked when a reporter asked her about her age.