After a pair of scratchy wins in her first two rounds, Williams looked as sharp as ever this time against Vandeweghe, hitting 17 winners to just 11 unforced errors and fighting off all six break points she faced in the match. The No.1-seeded Williams would beat Vandeweghe, a qualifier, 63 61.
"It was a much tougher match than the scoreline showed," Williams said in her on-court interview afterwards. "CoCo has such an amazing serve, so every time I was returning I was like, 'Hopefully I can touch the ball.' But it was really good for me to win this match today. I love playing here." Williams has now reached the quarterfinals or better 13 times in 14 career appearances at the Sony Open Tennis. Her only pre-quarterfinal loss at the Premier Mandatory event came all the way back in 2000, when she fell to Jennifer Capriati (who would then fall to Sandrine Testud in the quarters).
Next up for Williams is No.5 seed Angelique Kerber, who recovered from a second set blowout to beat No.23 seed Ekaterina Makarova, 64 16 63. Makarova not only had a winning head-to-head record against Kerber going into the match, 4-3, but had also won their last two meetings in straight sets. Williams leads Kerber in their head-to-head, 3-1. Kerber's win came at Cincinnati two summers ago. "It'll be completely different - Angelique is really good and moves really, really well," Williams said.
"I feel better than I did in my first few matches, though, so I hope I can keep going forward."
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario