Serena Williams in action against Maria Sharapova during their women’s singles final match at the Australian Open Grand Slam tennis tournament at Melbourne Park in Melbourne, Australia, 31 January 2015.
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Roberta Vinci has lost 6-0, 4-6, 6-4 in the third round of the Australian Open to Anna-Lena Friedsam in her first Grand Slam tournament since beating Serena Williams in the U.S. Open semifinals.
Konta, 24, sealed a 6-2 6-2 win over her Czech opponent at Melbourne Park, her second consecutive fourth round victory after reaching the same stage of the US Open last September. “I am very emotional”, she says. “So I thought, you know, it would be really fun to play in one”.
“I’m feeling pretty good – it’s wonderful what adrenaline does”, said Konta.
She came into the event as the world’s 69th-ranked player but was no match for the composed and massively experienced American, who is gunning to equal Steffi Graf’s Open-era record of 22 Grand Slam titles.
Awaiting the World No. 1 in the next round, which will take place on Sunday, will be another unseeded Russian, Margarita Gasparyan, who ended the run of Yulia Putintseva earlier in the day, 6-3, 6-4.
His voice sounding emotional at times, Raonic added: “Unfortunately in Saskatchewan in a very small community there was a shooting at a high school, so I want to take a moment and give thoughts to that community”. We haven’t played against each other before, but I’m sure we’ll be playing many times.
“Hopefully with each match I can just keep doing better”.
It was the third year in succession she had failed to make the main draw at the Australian Open.
Sharapova’s 600th career win sets her up with a tough test next up against 12th seed Belinda Bencic, after the risky Swiss teen beat Ukraine’s Kateryna Bondarenko.
The Czech had won their only previous match at last year’s French Open but Konta is an altogether different prospect these days and broke for the third time at the start of the second set. “From my perspective you don’t really try to pay attention to those sorts of things, because they are not really productive to me staying in the present and me just trying to take care of things my end”, Konta said.
Jo Durie was the last player to reach the last 16 here and also reached the Wimbledon quarter-finals in 1984.
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Fourth seed Agnieszka Radwanska, a semi-finalist in 2014, played through the pain of a leg injury to beat Puerto Rica’s Monica Puig 6-4 6-0.
