Serena Williams has booked a blockbuster quarter-final meeting with last year’s runner-up Maria Sharapova at the Australian tennis Open in Melbourne.
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A year ago, Williams won her sixth Australian Open with a competitive, 6-3, 7-6 (5) victory against Sharapova. The world No. 1 has treated the five-time Grand Slam champion as a personal punching bag in reeling off 17 straight wins, since she suffered a 4-6, 6-2, 6-4 loss in the WTA Tour Championships final in November, 2004. However, the world number five will need to be sharper on break points, especially in her next match against Williams, as she converted just four of her 16 break point opportunities.
At the net, Serena exchanged some nice words with Kasatkina, who later revealed the world No1 had told her she liked her forehand.
Sharapova said that she had managed to find a good balance between tennis, her personal life and her flourishing business career as she gets older. She must ensure that Williams does not break serve at any stage of the match and take every possible point as it comes.
There was a medical emergency at the Australian Open overnight.
“These are the players that will ultimately take our spot”, she said of the talented Bencic. I was hitting the ball well, doing the right things to get in that position, then let up.
She said: “I felt like I made it a little bit more hard than I should have”.
“These are the tournaments that we value the most and to be able to always come up with the best performance in the Grand Slams, of course I’m very proud of it and hopefully I can keep going”, he said.
Light rain is delaying the start of play on outdoor courts at Melbourne Park on Sunday, although matches on three covered stadiums have begun as scheduled.
Having beaten Serena much more recently than Sharapova, does Bencic have any advice for Maria?
“So I thought, you know, it would be really fun to play in one”, she said after her third-round win Down Under.
The pair have played just once before during the first round of last year’s Wimbledon with Williams winning in straight sets 6-4, 6-1, in a tournament which she went on to win. Sharapova was also the aggressor for the majority of the match, hitting 58 winners to 46 winners, compared to Bencic who hit 10 winners and 19 unforced errors.
Djokovic reached his 27th consecutive grand slam quarterfinal in the Open Era to tie Jimmy Connors for second – Roger Federer heads the list with 36 – but his display as afternoon turned into evening in Melbourne was nothing like his grand slam play of 2015. “She played a good game today”.
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Milos Raonic dedicated his third-round victory, a 6-2, 6-3, 6-4 win over Viktor Troicki, to victims of a shooting in a remote community in Saskatchewan, Canada, which left four people dead and at least two injured.
