Looking rather displeased with herself at times, including when she shook her head and smirked on the way to the net for a post-victory handshake Thursday night, Williams still managed to tie Martina Navratilova’s professional-era women’s record with her 306th career victory in Grand Slam matches. “To be up there with both men and women is something that’s super-rare, and it actually feels good”.
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“Each number I’m definitely proud of”, said Williams.
“I was lucky to get through, saving match point”, said Wawrinka after reaching the last 16 in Flushing Meadows for a fifth straight year. “It was really good for me to have a different type of rhythm and just move the ball around”.
The American superstar, seeking a record seventh US Open title, next faces Kazakhstan’s Yaroslava Shvedova, a 6-2, 7-5 victor over China’s Zhang Shuai.
Venus Williams breezed through her second-round match. “Hopefully I’ll just get better”.
Thiem, a 23-year-old Austrian, is considered one of the game’s top young players. “I feel like I made a lot of errors”, Williams said.
And most disconcerting for the remaining field is the sense that Williams, Saturday’s masterclass notwithstanding, has only scratched the surface of her potential so far.
Williams arrived at the year’s final grand slam with concerns swirling around a sore shoulder that hampered her at the Rio Olympics and forced her to pull out of a tournament in Cincinnati. That was in 1998 – the first year that she entered.
On Saturday, Williams expended nearly as much energy playing advocate as she did in her hourlong win over Larsson.
From there, the set would go with serve until the eighth game where Williams unsurprisingly began to take a stand from the receiving end once more, withstanding some inspired play from the Swede to eventually seal the opener, 6-2.
“I think I was playing good tennis from the beginning”, she said.
There was little question of who she had in mind, although she acknowledged, with a satisfied nod: “It is me”.
She said: “I don’t know how I came back”.
Serena’s sister Venus, seeded sixth, advanced comfortably by beating No. 26 Laura Siegemund 6-1, 6-2.
The great Williams took exactly an hour to dismantle Sweden’s Johanna Larsson 6-2 6-1 in the US Open third round at Flushing Meadows.
The number of accomplishments Williams continues to accumulate are becoming so numbing it makes you wonder whether she is appreciated enough for what she’s done – and continues to keep doing.
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Radwanska booked her place in the fourth round with a routine victory over French 25th seed Caroline Garcia, the Pole needed just 70 minutes to seal a 6-2 6-3 victory and a meeting with Ana Konjuh who saw off Varvara Lepchenko in three sets.
