World number one Serena Williams muscled past Maria Sharapova for an 18th straight time on Tuesday to set up an Australian Open semi-final against Agnieszka Radwanska, who has never beaten the dominant American.
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Up next for her is fourth-seeded Agnieszka Radwanska, who beat No. 10 Carla Suarez Navarro 6-1, 6-3 to reach her fifth Grand Slam semifinal.
The six-time champion has won the Australian Open every time she’s reached the semifinals and now stands two wins away from equaling Steffi Graf’s Open Era record of 22 career Grand Slam titles.
Williams, who also beat 2008 champion Sharapova in the final here last year, also won the French Open and Wimbledon in 2015 and got within two wins of a calendar-year Grand Slam before losing in the U.S. Open finals.
Australia Day began here Tuesday with anticipation for the quarterfinal match between rivals Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova.
Radwanska said she had little interest in scouting the Williams-Sharapova match. “Plus, when I play her, I know automatically I have to step up my game. Hopefully not. Unless you know something I don’t know”, she said when asked if this could be her last Australian Open. I’m playing good tennis, fun tennis for me anyway.
In fact, at 4-all – the last game that went with serve, Sharapova had two chances to go up a break once more, but some immaculate serving and hitting from the world number one was ultimately enough to get her a crucial hold of serve. “She makes you work, and that’s inspiring”.
Serena’s ideal record: Serena has made the Australian Open semifinals six previous times.
When the men’s draw for the tournament was made, eyes were drawn to a potential Federer-Djokovic clash in the semifinals.
“It would mean a lot to me, no doubt about it”. “To be quite honest, when I walked out of the press room I thought I was somewhat tough, but at the same time I was fair because I said nice things about him”, Federer said.
His next opponent will be No. 1 Novak Djokovic of Serbia or No. 7 Kei Nishikori of Japan.
However, Williams held her ground, eventually overwhelming the Russian with her precision and depth while continuing to serve her way out of trouble.
“It was super intense”, said Williams.
“I really want to enjoy being a professional tennis player and playing on Grand Slam courts, moments like this”.
Sharapova’s forehand performed great when it wasn’t stressed, only committing three unforced errors, but the stress from Williams was there a lot more than it wasn’t. “I was just dealing with some food poisoning issues from a few days ago”, Williams said.
It took Williams less than 20 minutes to jump out to a 4-love lead in the second set.
Williams’ dominance is demoralizing, but she left Sharapova dispirited in the second game.
Djokovic came into the match with question marks about his form after a scrappy fourth round performance against Gilles Simon, in which he came through in five sets.
“I’ve been playing this whole week aggressive and I don’t think I started out playing that way”. “We played two Grand Slam finals past year”. Williams blazed a trio of unforced errors to lose serve in the opening game, caught ball tosses in the blazing sun, took time to settle.
Prior to that, Federer prevented Djokovic from completing his Masters Slam in the final at Cincinnati while Djokovic defeated Federer in the final of the US Open in four sets three weeks later. I don’t know. It’s something about her game. I won against a top-10 player in straight sets.
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“It’s obviously always frustrating”, she told reporters.
