Defending champion Serena Williams ended a three-match losing streak against France s Alize Cornet to keep her hopes of a fifth Olympic gold medal alive Monday. Next up for her will be Alize Cornet of France, who won 6-1, 2-6, 6-3 against Sweden’s Johanna Larsson.
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Williams thrashed Cornet in their second round meeting at the Brisbane International in 2013 by winning 6-2, 6-2, and the American went on to win the title at the Australian hard court event.
The 26-year-old is the last woman to beat Williams at Wimbledon, knocking her out in the third round in 2014.
Martina Hingis, playing in her first Olympics in 20 years, teamed up with Timea Bacsinszky to reach the women’s doubles second round. She and sister Venus were previously unbeaten together in the Olympics. But Cornet battled back in the next two games. The French star frustrated Williams with her dogged determination at the baseline. Her speed and recovery extended points and neutralized her opponent’s heavy groundstrokes.
Later, she was forced to erase a pair of set points for Cornet, who had won four of their previous seven matchups. However, she dropped the game, forcing a tiebreaker.
The set ended up in a tiebreak that proved nearly more tense than the proceeding games.
Having worked so hard to gain an early edge-only to come up empty-Cornet looked deflated in the second set.
Though far less emphatic than his crushing win over Djokovic less than 24 hours earlier, a tiring Del Potro still fired 33 winners – including 16 off his mighty right flank – to record consecutive match wins at Tour-level for only the fifth time this year.
It was then that the Serena serve kicked into high gear, helping her save both set points and ultimately escape with the opening set unscathed – though not without a tense tie-break to decide the contest. A comeback wasn’t in the cards, though, as Cornet had too much ground to make up with no room for error.
Williams will meet 15th-seeded Elina Svitolina in the next round.
Williams leads in a head-to-head match-up, 4-0.
Monday’s match demonstrated Williams is far from invincible, and a tenacious, unpredictable opponent like Cornet can give her trouble.
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“She always says she knows how to play me and every time I play her I’m not in my best shape, which is ironic”.
