For a brief while, it looked like Australian Open 2015 might be the first major since 1999 to feature a fourth round without either Roger Federer or Serena Williams.
The five-time women’s champion trailed the promising Elina Svitolina by a break and then a set in the early exchanges of their third round, and, to be frank, looked rather uninterested. She was fiddling with her shoelaces, But then she looked up at the scores from other courts. And she saw that sister Venus, who had been practically down and out against Camila Giorgi, another effervescent talent, had made a radical comeback. And there is nothing quite like sibling rivalry to make your feet start moving.
Or sisterly solidarity. If Venus was going to be in the fourth round, Serena was too. “I was a little upset coming out here, she was down a set and a break and I was destroyed,” Serena said, by way of explanation. “And then I looked up and saw she was up a break 4-1 and I thought, ‘Come on Serena, you can do it too’. We always motivate each other.” From 50-odd minutes of lackadaisical tennis, abundant in breaks, Serena flipped the switch to rather more concentrated tennis. The turning point came with Serena serving at 2-0 in the second set, a game that lasted well over 10 minutes, as the score see-sawed around deuce.
The world No.1 saved two break points to save the game. And from then on didn’t fancy hanging around much longer in the early afternoon heat. Upping her points won on serve, especially on the second serve, which was a lowly 29 per cent in the second set, she raced to a 4-0 lead, rather bizarrely dropped serve for 4-2, then thundered through the next eight games, winning 4-6 6-2 6-0.
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