Perhaps an A-plus is in store.
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First seed Serena Williams is the favourite to win the Australian Open now that several of the top seeds have been knocked out including world No. 2 Simona Halep.
1 Jo Konta destroyed Venus Williams in the first round at the Australian Open to record the most spectacular win of her career.
Williams said she was pleased by her consistency and lack of errors, but possibly the first around-the-net she has ever played was a highlight.
“Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose and today I won”.
“I think I played unbelievable in the final set from that early break and I started hitting winners”, said the 45th-ranked Verdasco.
Two weeks ago Serena Williams was struggling with a knee problem which forced her to withdraw halfway through her only match at the Hopman Cup, her warm-up tournament before the Australian Open. “She’s playing well, and the best part of it is not only is she playing well, she’s playing consistent”.
Victory against Williams was her first triumph in 2016 have previously lost to Dominika Cibulkova in Hobart and Qiang Wang in China. Among that group of players, only Monica Seles and Marion Bartoli have beaten Williams.
Williams had 26 winners, including seven aces in the match. Amid a late-arriving crowd on center court, Sharapova ended the 1 hour, 11 minute affair with a service victor out wide that trickled off the tip of Sasnovich’s racket. Like past year the third round was the end for me, so I hope to go further this time.. “Once I got the tiebreak, I was better”. I had to make some adjustments.
“I say, “Okay, I will try a last tournament – Australian Open”.
World No 12 Belinda Bencic faces Hungary’s Timea Babos and 10th-seed Carla Suarez Navarro is up against Greece’s Maria Sakkari. “Ah, jealousy is not a good thing”, chided the 24-year-old.
Kateryna Bondarenko earned one of her biggest wins since returning from retirement after having a baby in 2013, beating two-time major victor and No. 23-seeded Svetlana Kuznetsova 6-1, 7-5.
For the second time in three days, Novak Djokovic won a match at the Australian Open and was confronted by questions about match-fixing in the sport.
Despite the lopsided score for Sharapova, it wasn’t a pristine performance.
Zheng pressed hard but could not convert a handful of break points and dropped serve once again as Konta took the first set in 37 minutes. That’s kind of when I started getting into that a little bit. It proved less of a test than her first-round meeting with Italy’s Camila Giorgi.
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No. 2-ranked Murray, who opened with a 6-1, 6-2, 6-3 win over Alexander Zverev, answered questions about reports, published by the BBC and Buzzfeed News, that match-fixing had gone unchecked in tennis. To date, Sharapova has lost 17 straight matches, including three Grand Slam finals, to the world No. 1.
