Rare Sight Returns: American vs. American in Quarterfinal
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Version 0 of 1. MELBOURNE, Australia — It has been nearly 10 years since one of the Williams sisters played another American in the quarterfinals of a Grand Slam tournament. But Sloane Stephens will get the opportunity to face Serena Williams on Wednesday at the Australian Open. It will be the first Grand Slam quarterfinal of any kind for Stephens, a 19-year-old from Los Angeles who has a personality nearly as lively as her footwork. “She’s obviously one of the greatest players to ever play the game,” Stephens said. “Without all that, it’s still a tennis match. You have to go out and play your game, no matter what. Without the titles, with the titles, it’s still a tennis match. The court’s the same size. You’re still playing a regular person across the net.” True enough but Williams — 12 years older than Stephens — has been playing larger-than-life tennis for quite some time. Her 15 Grand Slam singles titles, including five Australian Open titles, are by far the most of any active women’s player. She has won her last 20 matches and has dropped just eight games in four singles matches in Melbourne this year. On Monday she was far too much for Maria Kirilenko, a fine defensive player who has been riding the emotional high of her engagement to the Russian N.H.L. star Alex Ovechkin. Williams romped, 6-2, 6-0, in 57 minutes, putting 87 percent of her first serves into play: a remarkable figure for someone who serves with such force and that bodes ill for anyone left in contention in Melbourne, Stephens included. But Stephens, the upbeat leader of a promising new wave of American women’s players, at least knows what it’s like to face Williams. “It will be tough obviously,” Stephens said. “It’s quarters of a Grand Slam. There won’t be like that first time, ‘Oh my God, I’m playing Serena!’ That’s kind of out the window now. So that’s good.” Williams and Stephens practiced together as Fed Cup teammates last year, have spent time together in Los Angeles and finally played each other earlier this month in Brisbane, Australia, with Williams winning, 6-4, 6-3, in a quarterfinal that was hardly one-way traffic. Williams was not stingy with compliments afterward, and she and Stephens, who calls her “a friend,” have been bantering in Melbourne, too. On Sunday, on the eve of their fourth-round matches, the subject was grunting. “We were talking and talking about grunting, and one of the ladies with us was just like, ‘Do you grunt?”’ Stephens said. “And I was like, ‘I think so.’ And Serena’s like, ‘No you don’t.’ And I was like ‘Yeah, I do.’ And she was like, ‘No dude, you don’t. You’re so quiet. You’re like a mouse on the court.’ And I’m like, ‘O.K., whatever, I’m a mouse.’ And she’s like, ‘I’m such a spaz, but you’re so quiet.’ And I’m like ‘O.K., whatever, this is ridiculous.”’ To those in need of an outside opinion, Stephens seems quieter than Williams, a selective grunter who often raises the volume when the stakes are highest. But Stephens sounded even quieter in Hisense Arena on Monday when she played the Serbian 21-year-old Bojana Jovanovski, whose two-toned wail with every streak reverberated through the big, airy arena. Stephens said that she honestly had not even noticed and that was probably because Jovanovski after an erratic start kept Stephens very occupied chasing down her big-swinging, relatively flat groundstrokes in the final two sets. Stephens, often forced well behind her baseline, cracked open the match for good at 5-all in the third, breaking Jovanovski at love with a forehand winner down the line and then holding her own serve to win, 6-1, 3-6, 7-5. For a teenager into her first major quarterfinal, she seemed remarkably low-key about the development, but then this was not her first run at a Grand Slam. Last year, she also reached the fourth round at the French Open. “It’s just kind of normal,” Stephens said. “I think I’ve just worked so hard for it that I just feel like now it’s supposed to come. Even if I didn’t win today, that would have been O.K., but I know it’s coming. It’s supposed to happen.” The last time two American women met in a Grand Slam quarterfinal was at the 2008 U.S. Open, where Serena beat her sister Venus. The time before that was in 2004, when Serena Williams and Jennifer Capriati played in the quarterfinals of three of the four major events. The other women’s quarterfinal in the top half of the draw will match the No.1 seed, Victoria Azarenka, against the unseeded Russian Svetlana Kuznetsova. Kuznetsova’s ranking is impressive: just No.75 in the world. She even played the qualifying tournament in Sydney earlier this month. But her former and future rivals know too well what she is capable of when she is fit and focused, and after four rounds of the Australian Open, it should come as no great surprise that one of tennis’s most talented and original figures is back in the final eight. Kuznetsova, a former French Open and U.S. Open champion, advanced on Monday with a 6-2, 2-6, 7-5 victory over Caroline Wozniacki, a former world No.1 from Denmark who was seeded 10th. Azarenka defeated Elena Vesnina of Russia, 6-1, 6-1, in 57 minutes in a far less compelling fourth-round match in Rod Laver Arena. Azarenka, with Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova in virtual pursuit, must now defend her title here to have a chance to remain No. 1, and Kuznetsova in her current frame of mind and game could pose a serious threat. She has the power to hold her own against the big-hitting Belarussian, the variety to create angles and patterns that most top women cannot create. She won, for example, 23 of 25 points at net against Wozniacki, who looked like she would rather be elsewhere when she made her own forays to the net, particularly when overheads were involved. Kuznetsova, now 27, said she would have laughed “definitely” if someone had told her that she would be back in the quarterfinals of a Grand Slam event so quickly when she returned this season after recovering from a knee injury. It was a good day for the unseeded. Jérémy Chardy, the 36th-ranked Frenchman with a taste for the net, upset Juan Martín Del Potro in the third round and followed that up on Monday with a 5-7, 6-3, 6-2, 6-2 victory over the No.21 seed, Andreas Seppi of Italy, to reach his first Grand Slam quarterfinal in singles at age 25. But he will need to pull off the biggest upset of his career so far if he is to go further. He will next face the No.3 seed, Andy Murray of Britain, who was far too much for the weary Frenchman Gilles Simon, winning, 6-3, 6-1, 6-3. Simon had dug deep into his reserves in a late-night victory over his compatriot Gaël Monfils on Saturday and it showed. “A tough situation for both players, more obviously for him,” Murray said. “After the first few games, I mean, it didn’t feel like that competitive.” But Chardy will have French company in the quarterfinals. Jo-Wilfried Tsonga advanced on Monday with a 6-4, 3-6, 6-3, 6-2 victory over another Frenchman Richard Gasquet. Tsonga will now face Roger Federer, who beat the 13th-seeded Milos Raonic of Canada, 6-4, 7-6 (7-4), 6-2, to extend his mind-boggling record of consecutive Grand Slam quarterfinal appearances. This will be his 35th. Despite a rough draw, the 31-year-old Federer has yet to lose a set or his serve. Chardy is based at Mouratoglou Tennis Academy in the Paris suburbs, the same academy where Serena Williams is now training. He and Williams were both part of a preseason training camp on the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. “We have a practice,” Chardy said. “Now I understand why she won very easy many matches.” |