It felt like a full-circle match and moment at the United States Open.
As the large crowd milled outside Arthur Ashe Stadium full of
anticipation on a steamy Tuesday night, it was hard not to flash back to
the beginnings for Venus and Serena Williams.
To
Compton, Calif., and the early phases of their father Richard’s
unlikely business plan to make them champions. To braces and hair beads
and walking off court hand-in-hand after their first match against each
other as professionals at the 1998 Australian Open.
To Venus
sitting, with her hood up and her emotions mixed, in the stands of this
vast stadium in 1999 as her little sister became the first Williams to
win a major singles title.
In
a family sport, the Williamses have provided a sibling rivalry like no
other, and it seemed altogether fitting that they met again this
September with so much tennis history on the line.
But
there was no tweaking the narrative arc of their remarkable careers on
Tuesday. Though Venus the elder swung for the lines and even won the
second set in a hurry, Serena
the younger prevailed — as she has so often in recent years — to win
this quarterfinal match, 6-2, 1-6, 6-3, and bring the prospect of a
Grand Slam ever closer to reality.
Serena Williams Advances to U.S. Open Semifinals
CreditSam Hodgson for The New York Times
Serena,
33, is now just two victories from joining Maureen Connolly, Margaret
Court and Steffi Graf as the only women to win all four major singles
titles in a season.
A
favorite in all her duels at this stage, Serena will be a particularly
heavy favorite in the next round against Roberta Vinci, an unseeded
Italian veteran better known for her doubles prowess who will be playing
in her first Grand Slam singles semifinal.
Serena
has not lost a set to Vinci in any of their previous four matches,
beating her, 6-4, 6-3, in the quarterfinals in Toronto last month.
“I think this is the end of the road for Roberta Vinci,” said Chris Evert, the champion turned analyst, on ESPN.
Stranger
things have happened in sports, and Vinci’s crafty game full of slice
and rhythm shifts is the type of game that has occasionally caused
Serena grief in the past.
“She’s
going to present a completely different game than my last three
matches, four matches,” Serena said. “She has nothing to lose. I don’t,
either. So we’re just going to go out and have a lot of fun.”
It was understandable if unconvincing spin. A Grand Slam at this very advanced stage would certainly be a great deal to lose.
But
Serena has shrugged off so much tennis trouble this year — scrapping
and rallying repeatedly on her way to the major trophies — and she
shrugged off some more trouble on Tuesday night against her sister to
run her record in three-set matches this year to 18-1.
The
Williamses have changed the women’s game with their open-stance
backhands and hyper-aggressive returning, but even by the family’s
standards, Venus was audacious from the start, taking huge cuts at
anything resembling an opportunity and even at a few that did not.
“She
came out hitting so hard, just blasting every shot,” Serena said in her
post-match interview on court. “I was on defense a lot because she had
so much power. It wasn’t really easy today at all.”
It
was a deliberate attempt by Venus to retake the initiative and shift
the paradigm after losing six of the last seven matches against Serena,
the only exception being Venus’s victory in the semifinals last year of
the Rogers Cup in Montreal.
In
their most recent encounter, Serena won, 6-4, 6-3, in the fourth round
at Wimbledon this year. But Venus posed a bigger threat on Tuesday and
would actually end up prevailing in one of the key statistical duels of
the evening, winning 50 percent of the points played on her second
serve to Serena’s 48 percent.
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